


Hold On, Holy Ghost

by MalMuses



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Divergent from 15x09, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Episode S15e09 The Trap, Eventual Happy Ending, Futher Prayer and Confessions, Heavy Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mark of Cain (Supernatural), Mark of Cain Castiel, Mutual Pining, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Post Chuck, Spoiler Warning In Effect, purgaytory
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-17
Updated: 2020-09-29
Packaged: 2021-02-27 13:33:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 22,353
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22287952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MalMuses/pseuds/MalMuses
Summary: When Dean and Castiel return from Purgatory, they race to free Sam and Eileen from Chuck's clutches.It's a close call, but Chuck is locked away. Dean and Sam are safe from his whims ruling their lives.And now, Castiel has the Mark of Cain.Canon Divergent from Season 15 Episode 9.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester, Eileen Leahy/Sam Winchester, Michael/Adam Milligan
Comments: 248
Kudos: 316
Collections: The Destiel Fan Survey Favs Collection





	1. Leviathan Blossom

**Author's Note:**

> Well, this was unexpected.
> 
> But yes, I'm going there, folks. If you haven't seen Season 15 Episode 9, "The Trap", then this fic is NOT for you! Major, major spoilers here. In fact, some of the episode will be recreated in the first chapter, which is where I'll begin to diverge from what the episode gave us.
> 
> There will be a lot of angst and violence in this fic. Castiel bears the Mark of Cain for much of this story, and if you've seen the show, you know the kind of things that go hand in hand with that.
> 
> I do, as always, promise you a happy ending.
> 
> I have no idea how often I'll update this one - I have a lot of fics on my plate right now, but this one called out to me immediately as the episode finished airing, and I so rarely write canon these days that I jumped at the chance.
> 
> I hope some of you are brave enough to take the ride with me!
> 
> Thanks to my lovely SOBS, for this chapter.
> 
> \- Mal <3

  
  
  


The smell of the Leviathan Blossom was sweet, tobacco-like, slightly earthy. A cloudy oil leaked from its center where—as Castiel had noted—it “got a little smushed.” Dean couldn’t stop staring at it. Even after Castiel tucked it back into his inner pocket as he moved past Dean to the golden, shimmering tear of Michael’s portal, Dean stared at the pull in the tan fabric of the trench coat that denoted where it was. A tiny puff of its scent drifted from Castiel as he moved ahead of Dean, and it assailed Dean’s senses—he would never forget that smell, as long as he lived, he knew right then.

Dean’s hesitation wasn’t even a moment; so slight, a pause barely notable, the splitting of a second like an atom, and with just as much power. 

_“I need to say something,”_ he’d said to Cas.

 _“You don’t need to say it,”_ Cas had reassured him, straight away.

Except that Dean _did._ He still needed to say everything he hadn’t made clear, everything that prayer hadn’t contained because it was just too painful to vocalize, in case Castiel didn’t make it.

In case Purgatory turned out to be both their beginning, and their end.

But...it hadn’t, and that much, Dean had to be grateful for.

They were okay. Not just physically, not torn apart by Leviathan or Eve or some other creature that Dean wouldn’t put it past Chuck to throw in here just to slow them down. But emotionally, too; forgiveness was a big step when their mistakes had been so monumental. When Dean’s anger had been so far in excess of what Castiel deserved...as if Dean hadn’t made his own mistakes. Hadn’t screwed up just as much.

He shouldn’t have let Cas go.

And finally, Castiel knew that. Knew that he was worth—had always been worth—going after. That _Dean_ had made the mistake, that time.

But the split second of hesitation wasn’t enough for Dean to tell Castiel the rest of what he wanted to say. The world was still turning, out there beyond that glowing rift, and in that world Sam needed them. Eileen needed them. Chuck needed them...to lock him up and save his creations from his ego.

So, Dean took one last look around at the timeless, sepia forest where he’d first come to terms with his love for his angel, long ago. This time, this portal, this second chance...he wasn’t going to squander this one. They’d save the world, save it from God himself. And then Dean was going to open his damn mouth and say that prayer.

He swore on that fucking Leviathan Blossom, that was exactly what he was going to do.

The trees, skinny and tall and sick looking, were entirely silent in the grey air. They didn’t sway; no breeze, no breath, not even a monster rustled them, everything in the vicinity having already been felled by Castiel’s skilled blade. Dean would have said he was proud of Cas—his strategy, his cool-headedness when he’d been trapped, his strength and skill to execute his plan—but right then, there was time for none of that. He could tell Castiel that later, too.

No more split seconds. First, they had to deal with Chuck.

Dean stepped through the portal, and it closed behind him with a sizzling hiss. He never wanted to see Purgatory again, but Dean couldn’t help a small smile as he stood in the war room of the bunker, watching the tail ends of Michael’s tear knit back together. 

He had a lot to thank Purgatory for. 

_____

Dean’s knee jiggled the whole way from Lebanon to The Lucky Elephant Casino, and for the entire six hours it took them to cross the state line into Nebraska, Castiel didn’t even mention it. He had his own nervous tics—it has taken Dean years to spot them, but they were there. Castiel seemed so stoic and emotionless, so damn fucking _grumpy,_ upon first acquaintance. But Dean had known Castiel longer than, most likely, any other human alive on the planet. He most certainly watched Castiel more carefully than any other did.

There was the way his jaw would sit tense, his chin jutted just the tiniest bit as his tongue sat behind his teeth. There was the way he’d sometimes shove a hand into his trench coat pocket, hiding the way his thumb would press firmly to the outside of his forefinger, subtling clenching, a white imprint on his tan skin. There was the way he’d blink even less than usual, his gaze resting on the horizon out of the window, but often seeming as though he wasn’t seeing any of it. And too, there was the way his eyes would sometimes flick over to Dean. A little check, a little reassurance that yup, there he was, so things couldn’t be too bad.

They’d had a decade to learn each other's tells.

“You go in first,” was all Castiel said as they exited Baby in unison, shutting the Impala doors as quietly as they could while still locking them. 

Dean didn’t argue; he had absolute faith in Castiel having his back in any fight, even when they’d been at odds, Dean still would have put his life in Castiel’s hands. He hoped that Castiel had still felt the same...but, with a pang, he realized that maybe he hadn’t. Dean, after all, was the one who’d let him go.

His hands roaming his own form beneath his jacket, checking the essentials (gun, angel blade, knife), Dean set his expression once again, focused. He was going to get through this bitch of a day, and then he was going to make sure that Castiel never, ever had to doubt him again.

The Lucky Elephant was pretty tasteless, even for a casino. Pink plastic statuettes of beaming elephants were the key to its decor, and the tacky golds and reds and neon strips all fought for attention in a dizzying, garish whirl. Not only had God chosen a fucking casino, he’d picked a really, really damn awful one.

With a flick of their eyes, Dean and Castiel checked in with each other one last time before Dean entered the building, slipping back into the silent synchronicity that made their partnership so easy. Two hunters, from different places, made of different things...and yet the same, often, in more ways than anyone could ever expect. 

They were both volatile. Prone to anger and violence when provoked. Not good at talking, and not good at feelings.

 _But both forgiven_ , Dean thought, as he stepped firmly into The Lucky Elephant. And that was what mattered.

“Sam!” Dean called out, low but relieved, as he saw his brother sat in the middle of the casino floor, amidst eerily flashing slot machines that had never been so silent. 

_Why the fuck a casino?_ Dean wondered. There was some kind of parallel there, he decided—between Chuck liking to gamble with his pawns, mess with people's lives and set folks against each other, and Chuck setting himself up in a casino—but it would take someone more poetic than Dean to make a pretty phrase of it. _Fuckin’ creepy puppet master jerk,_ Dean settled for thinking, instead.

“Dean!” Sam hissed, low. 

“Where’s Chuck?” Dean asked, already running over, seeing the cable ties on his brother's wrists as he sat in a wooden chair, crumpled and bloodied amongst the gaudy carpet and erratic neon lights. He looked totally out of place, his hair disheveled and his clothes pulled around, exposing the unhealing bullet wound at the front of his shoulder. 

What had Chuck been up to? And where was Eileen?

Dean heard Cas moving toward them, knowing he’d have been tracking Dean very closely. Pulling out his utility knife and flicking open the steel blade, Dean made quick work of the first of Sam’s thick, plastic binds. The tie had cut into his wrists a little, clearly he’d been struggling, but otherwise, Sam looked strangely unharmed. Which made the blood puzzling. A problem for later.

“Nearby,” Sam answered, flexing his wrist quickly as Dean broke through the first restraint.

Dean heard footsteps, and they weren’t Castiel’s. 

A resounding _CRACK_ that Dean felt rather than heard had him sprawling sideways.

SON OF A— _Eileen?_

Dean could tell from the expression on Eileen’s face (and, of course, the fact that she’d just whacked him with a lamp) that something was very wrong. Holding up his hands in front of himself, Dean backed up carefully, his feet scrambling for purchase on the tacky carpet. 

“Eileen, I don’t want to hurt you—” he began, meaning it, desperately meaning every word...but Castiel was already there, tackling Eileen from the side and flooring her instantly.

Eileen’s petite frame hit the ground with a _thud_ , Castiel going down with her, pinning her arms to her sides so that the small blade—Scalpel? Was that a fucking scalpel?—she’d been waving at Dean could do no more harm. 

Dean lost track of the two of them tussling when Chuck appeared.

He glided out quietly, from one of the lines of slot machines, approaching to stand beside the chair where Sam still sat, tied by one wrist. His smug face looked like it needed a fist, and before Dean had even fully processed the thought, his body was following up on his desire.

Swinging hard at Chuck’s jaw, Dean couldn’t deny the sense of satisfaction that it brought, even if it really did little more than make Chuck roll his eyes a bit.

“Ah, come on,” Dean said with a small shrug. “You knew I had to.”

In his periphery, Dean cataloged movement; Sam had Dean’s knife, and he was cutting himself free. Castiel had let go of Eileen, and was digging in his pocket, pulling out their key piece, their shake-up, their _coup detat_...a small sphere, the size of Castiel’s fist.

The crack of Chuck’s fist hitting Dean in turn wasn’t wholly unexpected, if Dean was honest. He flew back across the floor, socked straight out flat by the power of the hit—it really wasn’t fair, Dean thought, this whole fighting God thing.

Chuck’s mouth was moving in a snappy retort, echoing Dean’s own words back at him. Dean barely heard, though. His attention was taken by Castiel taking his chance, rolling the sphere across the patterned flooring, curving it straight across the faux-opulent golden design that wove through the carpet and into Sam’s waiting hand.

Untied, Sam stood triumphant...almost.

There was an expression on his face that Dean didn’t quite understand. He hesitated.

Chuck merely smirked. Fuck, Dean wanted to wipe that expression off his stupid beardy face. Why did the universe have to be the fevered imaginings of such a tiny little asshole? Dean wanted to wipe the floor with that pompous fucking smile.

“Sam!” Dean barked, darting his eyes back to his brother.

“Oh, he won’t,” Chuck purred horrifically. “Will you, Sam?”

There was a long, breathless moment. The world seemed to stop spinning so that it could watch its own fate being decided. 

“Sam!” Castiel broke it, his voice low and urgent. “Do it! Trap him!”

“Sammy here knows,” Chuck said coolly, “what will happen if he does. I showed him, didn’t I, Sam?”

“Sam?” Dean asked, less sure now, a thread of nerves working its way up through his chest and grabbing him.

The sphere was a dull, dark, almost reddish color from the center of the Leviathan Blossom that Dean and Castiel had used to make it back in the bunker. Dean’s eyes were stuck on it. Everyone in the room was just...waiting.

Why were they waiting?

In a sharp, simultaneous movement, Sam and Chuck both gasped, hands going to their shoulders in a mirror of each other. Sam’s eyes were wide with first pain, then understanding, and Chuck’s flickered with discomfort before settling into a contained glee that Dean instantly feared.

“What’s happening?” Castiel called, and Dean didn’t need any of his tells to show him how worried the angel was, how confused and concerned. It was all there in his voice, loud and clear.

“Poor Sam, here,” Chuck answered on a breathy laugh as he straightened once more, “lost hope.”

Dean turned his gaze to Sam, disbelieving.

“We were connected, him and I...and now,” Chuck was saying, going off into some villain monologue that Dean couldn’t, and wouldn’t, give two shits about. 

All that mattered to Dean right then was that Sam had apparently lost hope.

It made no sense. Even the thought was abhorrent.

This was _Sam._

“No,” Dean said firmly, fixing his eyes on his brother. “You—you can’t. Not _you_. You’re the one that keeps us going, Sam, every time.”

Sam’s fingers were curled around the sphere, his other hand having slid from the now-healed wound at his shoulder to rest heavily in the air at his side. His lips parted, but no sound came out. Not a word, no defense, no fight.

_No._

“Sam, no,” Castiel joined in, shaking his head. “This isn’t you, this is _Him,_ Sam, getting in your head.”

“What about us?” Dean shouted, something sparking that instant-anger that he’d earlier voiced his shame at, back in purgatory, when he prayed to Castiel. He didn’t try to keep it down. “What about Team Free Will, Sam, you remember that?”

Sam’s hazel eyes dragged over to Dean, resting on his face almost longingly. “I’m sorry,” he whispered.

“No!” Dean fought back, growling. “What about us? What about everything we ever promised each other? In this till the end, huh, Sam? Going out _fighting._ Butch and Sundance.”

Sam blinked.

Something _shifted_ behind Sam’s eyes; something that Dean had said pressed a button, and all Dean could do was hold on and pray it was the right one.

Chuck’s face slowly changed, his eyebrows raising, an astonished blink tuning into wide-eyed horror. “NO—”

He didn’t have time to get out anything else before Sam smashed the sphere at his feet.

_____

The smell of the Leviathan Blossom clung to them all as they rode back across the Nebraska state line, heading for home. Dean was glad to leave the chichi pink elephants behind; he’d be having nightmares about those things, he knew it.

Baby purred on late into the night.

Dean drove, of course. His knee was still jiggling, just as it had on the journey up to The Lucky Elephant, though he couldn’t quite as easily work out the source of his unease. 

Chuck had gone up in thick, sweet, tobacco-scented smoke. 

A horrific thunderstorm cracked open the sky above the casino, and a deep rumble ran through the ground under their feet that took Dean straight back to several years past, when curling bursts of Darkness had begun to invade the world.

But this time, after, there was only silence. They hadn’t unleashed; they’d bound.

It would have been more of a sigh of relief if Castiel hadn’t immediately dropped to the ground, a long, gruff scream tearing from his lungs and sending Sam, Dean, and even the newly-awakened Eileen running to his side. 

He’d been out cold ever since.

Castiel would be fine, Dean told himself, tightening his fingers on the steering wheel, taking comfort in Baby’s familiar leather. He’d gripped that wheel so tight, for so many years, that there were grooves in the wrapping where his fingers settled. Stress dents. Ones that told tales of every strange path Dean’s life had taken in the past decades. 

But this…Dean never thought he’d see this. 

Sam had helped him carry Castiel out to the Impala. He lay against one window, now, slumped down in his trench coat, a blanket from the trunk thrown over him and another bundled up against the glass like a pillow. Eileen sat next to him. She didn’t know Castiel like they did, but even so, her concerned gaze kept moving across to him—Dean could see it, in Baby’s rear-view mirror. 

Sam was quieter. He’d thanked Dean gruffly once they’d settled on the front bench, ready to head back to Kansas. Dean had accepted it, hadn’t pushed. They could talk about whatever had gone down with Chuck later. 

When Castiel was awake again. When he was better. It was a silent, unmentioned agreement. Something that Sam seemed to sense Dean needed. So, they drove without a single word. Not even Robert Plant would have been able to soothe Dean’s nerves right then, so instead, his knee jiggled. On through the hours.

Dean tried to keep his eyes on the road, but they kept slipping up to the mirror, resting on Castiel. One of his hands hung out beneath the blanket, dangling next to his leg. Dean could barely tear his eyes from it—sometimes, it would twitch, and Castiel’s fist would clench, like he was in pain.

It was that arm, Dean knew.

That arm that Dean had felt pressed against his own, burning hot through the fabric as they’d hauled Castiel up from the floor. He’d pushed up the sleeve, and even knowing full well what he’d see, he’d gasped.

Sam and Eileen had fallen silent, too, just staring. 

The Mark was already blooming on Castiel’s forearm. His surprisingly tan skin looked almost burned, the redness of the symbol against his skin somehow barbaric looking. That _thing,_ Dean thought with revulsion, should never be on an angel.

But what other choice had they had?

Chuck was gone, locked up safely somewhere far behind Dean’s comprehension. 

And Castiel being an angel...well, that was part of the point, wasn’t it. He could handle it—better than Dean had. Those had been the unspoken words that had filled the air at the bunker as they’d completed the spell Michael had given them. Castiel might have said, _“You already took the Mark, you can’t do it again,”_ but what Dean had heard was, _“You couldn’t handle this, last time, and because of that it has to be me.”_

In the rear-view mirror, Castiel twitched, the most recent of many low moans falling from his lips and fogging the glass.

A shiver of grief and fear tore through Dean’s chest. What had he done? What had he allowed to happen?

Yes. They’d beaten Chuck—for good, this time. And Castiel was an angel, stronger by default than Dean had been.

But the closer they got to the bunker, the stronger the feeling of wrongness in Dean’s chest grew.


	2. The Mark

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here I am, back with chapter two already!
> 
> This fic has been fully outlined in detail and is coming to me pretty quickly, so while I won't set a specific schedule for posting (because life happens, and I have lots of other things to post, too!) I will say that I'll probably be posting one chapter per week-ish for this baby.
> 
> It's currently looking like there will be 17 chapters...and ample use of that heavy angst tag, with the required eventual happy ending.
> 
> Thank you so much for reading!
> 
> \- Mal <3

Sunrise came and went. 

In the eternal underground twilight of the bunker, where the old, yellowish light bulbs were illuminated no matter the time of day, it was hard to tell. But Dean knew; he was watching the clock. He pulled his phone from his pocket every few minutes:  _ click, _ check,  _ click. _ Pushing the power button to light up the screen, register the time, and shut it off again.

“You should sleep,” Eileen had said as Dean had descended the steep steps into the bunker.

He’d given her a small smile, of course, and nodded vaguely, but with the burden of Castiel’s prone form slumped over his shoulder, solid and weighty, Dean had been spared any further conversation on the topic.

As if Dean was going to sleep now.

He couldn’t.

Castiel was spread out on Dean’s bed, for one thing. Dean had wrangled off his trench coat and boots and dropped them on the floor beside the bed. Then, only seconds later, he’d picked them up. He took them over to the chair in front of his slightly cluttered desk, piled with stray books he needed to return to the library and whiskey glasses he’d been in no mood to take back to the kitchen before everything went down with Purgatory. He’d tucked Castiel’s boots neatly under the antique desk chair before throwing the trench coat over the back of it.

No; still not right. Thirty seconds of awkward staring, and then Dean had given in, pulling the coat back into his hands to carefully, reverently fold. It draped neatly over the back of the chair now, perfectly doubled and tucked like some kind of altar cloth on a holy day.

Dean had returned to sit beside the bed then, watching. He hadn’t moved. Morning came, and with it, Sam’s wordless coffee. Dean wondered where Eileen was; he didn’t ask. The words that were fighting to come out of his mouth were nothing to do with Eileen, so perhaps he shouldn’t burden Sam with them at all right then. He just took the mug, curled his fingers around its circumference, and sipped.

Castiel lay on his back, still, exactly as Dean had placed him. He breathed; that was what Dean latched on to. He was going to wake up, it was all going to be fine. Dean breathed with him in the silence of the room. The space was echoey, the tiled floor and painted concrete walls bouncing back the heavy breaths until Dean couldn’t ignore them. Castiel’s rising and falling chest, steady but harsh, became his marker of time passing—each breath a second in a strangely endless night.

The Mark on his arm slowly developed, growing stronger.

When Dean had done this, way back when, it had been wholly different. There had been no spell, then. Cain had passed the Mark on willingly—Dean had requested it. It had been a transfer; the lock, the key, hadn’t been  _ created. _

Dean didn’t know what the difference was, what that meant. If it meant anything.

On top of Dean’s beige, Men of Letters standard-issue blanket, Castiel’s arm rested, still. His hand no longer clenched or twitched, he was simply motionless, and Dean had rolled Castiel’s cuff up past his elbow so that he could watch the most profane of symbols unconsecrate the holiest of skin.

Dean felt sick, watching as the Mark thrived on Castiel’s divine form.

It was wrong. So wrong.

Why the  _ fuck _ had he let Castiel do this? Alright, he hadn’t wanted to fight with him, not after he’d only just been able to choke out “sorry” like a pathetic child who couldn’t use his words. And Castiel had said Dean couldn’t take the Mark—but had he meant it? Was that true? Or was that Cas just being self-sacrificing, being…Cas?

Dean’s fist clenched in the fabric of his filthy, Purgatory-stained jeans, and curled his head forward.

“Hey, Cas,” he gasped out quietly, to his knees. “I don’t know if you can hear me right now. I don’t know if…if you’re in there, I guess. If you can hear when your vessel is shut off, or if—”

A harsh gulp broke Dean’s prayer, but he forged on.

“—or if what wakes up will even be you. That’s kind of an unknown at this point.”

Dean reached up, pinching the bridge of his nose tightly. “But, y’know, this worked for me back in Purgatory, so…maybe this is what I should’ve been doing all along.”

Castiel remained totally still, his eyes unmoving beneath his lids, his rasping lungs the only tiny sign of life.

“It should be me on that bed, Cas. Or if I really couldn’t do it again, then someone else. Not you. Fuck, you’re a literal  _ angel _ , Cas! This thing, this Mark, it—” Somehow tears were building at the back of Dean’s eyes again, as if he hadn’t done enough of that already. Fuck. “—it’s  _ evil _ , Cas. We deal with evil all the time, I know that, but man, I…”

Dean trailed off, pursing his lips as he swiped harshly at his eyes.

“I never felt anything like that, like what I felt when that thing was on me. I should have never let you do it. I should have never let you walk away before, and I should have never let you pull your self-sacrificing bullshit with this, either. Like you don’t  _ mean _ something? Like you’re not important to me? Fuck!”

Tears dripped down the side of his nose, but Dean just ignored them. Just like he had leaning against that rough tree back in Purgatory, he let them out. It was time. Shit, he’d earned it—hadn’t he? Hadn’t he put in the work to be allowed to have things in his life that were just for him? Emotions, feelings? Something that wasn’t the job, wasn’t Sam, wasn’t every other person he felt responsible for?

_ Cas. _

Sobbing breaths broke his speech, but Dean picked back up.

“You gotta wake up. And you gotta be  _ you _ when you do, okay? We’re not done yet. You and me, Cas, we ain’t done yet. So, you get your ass down here, and you wake up, and you squint up at me and give me that look, okay?”

Dean huffed out a small laugh, rubbing at his nose with the heel of his hand.

“That look that says, ‘what did you do this time, Dean?’ or ‘what trouble are we in now, Dean?’ That really disapproving one. You can do it, buddy.”

Despite Dean’s pleading, he got nothing. 

A few more hours passed, according to the screen of Dean’s phone. His battery was dying. He just let it.

Dean dozed.

His edges were all fuzzy, and something soft was pressed into the side of his face—the blanket. Fuck, he’d fallen asleep, and—

A large hand gently shook Dean’s shoulder.

Dean lifted his heavy head from where he’d slumped as he drifted off, his cheek on the bedding next to Castiel’s hip, one hand gripping at the angel’s forearm. Clear blue eyes gazed unerringly down at him from the pillow.

“You should lay down, Dean,” Castiel rasped thickly, his fingers still curved around Dean’s shoulder. “Get some real rest.”

“Cas!”

“Yes,” Castiel said simply, the hint of a smile curling the edge of his lip; an expression so tiny that most would have missed it, but never Dean.

Dean moistened his dry lips, feeling them slightly cracked beneath his tongue. He hadn’t drunk anything beyond the single coffee that Sam had brought him that morning, not since they’d left for Purgatory, however long ago that had been.

Fully intending on saying something considered, something real, something constructing of actual words, Dean swallowed harshly. Instead, all he managed was another ragged, “Cas.”

The memory foam shifted and the bed frame gave a gentle creak as Castiel pushed up off the bed with his elbow. He slid the hand he held at Dean’s shoulder around further, pulling him in for a rough hug. “You did it,” he said. “You beat God.”

Dean shook his head as he pulled back after squeezing Castiel tight. “We did.  _ We  _ beat God. And now…”

Both of their eyes flicked down to The Mark, where it sat proudly against Castiel’s forearm. Dean couldn’t even look at it without his stomach churning, so he jerked his eyes away, back up to Castiel’s—which were already waiting, azure and unblinking.

“I’m fine,” Castiel said gruffly, beginning to sit up properly and ease his feet down off the bed.

Dean looked at him skeptically.

“Really, Dean,” Castiel reassured him, his voice pitched just slightly lower. “I can...feel it. But my head is clear, for now. As an angel, it may just not affect me the same way that it did for you.”

_ Or maybe just not yet, _ Dean thought, remembering how the Mark hadn’t seemed like such a big deal at first to him, either. Useful even, at the beginning. Something he’d felt in control of. Until he wasn’t. He watched Castiel carefully, the words left unsaid.

“You should shower, and eat, and sleep,” Castiel said. “How is Sam?”

“He’s fine,” Dean croaked. “The Chuck-wound healed right up after they disconnected. Stuck a little Neosporin on his wrists in the car like when he used to fall off his bike as a kid, and he was good to go.”

“And Eileen?”

“I, uh,” Dean pulled his brows together as he thought. “I haven’t seen her, actually, since we got back, I was—”

_ ‘More worried about you’ _ hung unsaid in the air after Dean’s sharp stop.

Castiel nodded before moving to retrieve his trench coat from where it was still folded in respect on the seat of the chair. “We should go and check on them,” he said, unrolling his sleeve.

The Mark slowly faded out of Dean’s view beneath the fabric. As Dean looked Castiel over, pushing his feet into his boots, trench coat back in place, he looked…normal. Himself. The same as he’d been for ten years, or more now.

Dean sucked in a low, calming breath before swallowing down his uneasiness. Everything seemed fine. Maybe, this time, they weren’t crashing from one disaster into the next.

“Yeah. Let’s go check on Eileen and Sam,” Dean said. “Then I’ll see about that shower and food thing.”

_____

The corridor beyond Dean’s bedroom door was quiet, other than the echoes of his and Castiel’s boots as they moved up toward the war room. By time alone—early evening—Sam and Eileen should be awake, but Dean didn’t hear any voices as they progressed into the common areas of the bunker.

When the map table came into view, Dean could see why; Sam was sat at the head of it, but he was alone. Various books scattered around, he had his elbows leaning into the table, gazing down at one that rested open between his arms. He seemed unseeing.

“Hey, Sam,” Dean called quietly as they entered. “Look who woke up.”

Sam’s head jerked up, his hair flying, taken by surprise at the sound. He grinned as soon as his eyes fell on Castiel, though, and he gave the angel a warm nod. “It sure is good to see you with your eyes open, Cas,” Sam greeted him.

“It’s, uh, good to have them open,” Castiel answered solemnly as he lowered himself down into the chair next to Sam.

“Where’s Eileen at?” Dean asked, pulling out the chair opposite Castiel so that he could sit on the edge of it, leaning forward with his weight on the Pacific Ocean directly west of Peru.

Sam’s eyes slipped back down to his book, and he cleared his throat a couple of times before replying. “Gone.”

Frowning, Dean sat up and took his arms from the table, folding them across his chest. “Gone? Gone where?”

“Gone, Dean,” Sam said more firmly, his tone clear that he did  _ not _ want to repeat it again.

For a long minute there was a heavy silence. Dean exchange a surprised, sad look with Castiel, but neither of them seemed to know what to say.

“She, uh, said she didn’t know what was real, after everything with Chuck. Turns out he put her here—planted the spell to bring her back, put her in the bunker to spy on us. So, she doesn’t know if—if anything, uh, anything she experienced, or—”

Sam was struggling, but Dean got it, the painful truth of it, so he stepped in to cut him off. “That sucks,” he offered quietly. “I’m sorry.”

“I can’t really blame her,” Sam admitted quietly. That was so like Sam, Dean thought. He could be angry, even if he understood why Eileen had left. But he’d try not to be. He was so  _ good _ , even when he was hurt _. _ Dean felt a strange pang of jealousy, though he couldn’t quite work out where to place it.

“I’m sorry, Sam,” Castiel spoke up, too.

“She probably just needs a bit of time to sort out her head,” Dean suggested, trying his best to nod convincingly. “Chuck’s messed with us all, y’know? Got us doubting, overreacting, second-guessing ourselves.”

Sam nodded down at the table, making a show of refocusing on his book. 

It was Castiel that responded to Dean’s words, catching his eye and offering a small, tentative smile, almost shy. “I told Dean a little while back,” he said, turning his eyes to Sam, “that we were real. We can doubt anything happening around us; but us, who we are, our true feelings…I believe those are all, unequivocally, real.”

“How?” Sam asked dully, looking back up slowly. “How can you be so sure?”

“If Chuck had that much control over us, he wouldn’t have had to rewrite his ending so many times,” Castiel pointed out. “Because we’d have done what he wanted the first time.”

They all fell quiet again at that, contemplating. It made sense to Dean. The way he saw it, Chuck was gone now. Anything he still felt was him. The stuff that didn’t seem to matter as much anymore…well, maybe that had never been him in the first place.

Dean couldn’t help resting his eyes on Castiel. He was still worried. They still needed to work out what they were going to do, now—Cas may think that he could simply resist the Mark, handle it better than Dean did, but Dean disagreed, heavily.

He’d thought that, too.

And even several years later, he still had nightmares which paraded the faces of people he’s killed in front of him, to a sickening fanfare of his own voice, saying things he would never have said without the Mark. Hurting people he would never have hurt.

Castiel stared back at Dean as if trying to read his thoughts.

Sam cleared his throat. “So, everything was good when Cas woke up?” he asked, looking curiously back and forth between Dean and Castiel.

Dean knew that Sam was probably wondering why he and Castiel weren’t biting each other’s heads off anymore. If he asked, Dean would simply tell him that he apologized; but he was pretty sure that he and Castiel had an unspoken agreement that what was said in Purgatory had been just for them. Not that Dean was ashamed of it, it was probably plain for everyone to see, but Castiel deserved it to be just for him.

There were other words, other things, that Dean should have said. And he would, soon. He was still determined. Maybe Castiel wouldn’t want to hear them, and that was okay—well, not okay, it would fucking suck, but one way or another Dean would survive it—but Castiel deserved to make the choice for himself whether he wanted Dean the way Dean wanted him.

Free Will. They were working on it.

Dean smiled to himself, remembering christening them Team Free Will many years before, with Castiel knocked out on a bed in a motel room, a much younger Sam, and the world about to end. It was truer than ever now.

With a jolt, Dean realized that Castiel was speaking, and he’d just been gazing softly at the angel. Darting his eyes over to Sam, Dean hoped to get away with it—but Sam was looking directly at him with a smug little smirk.

“—seems to be holding perfectly well, for now,” Castel was saying to Sam, pressing his hand to his inner arm where The Mark was hidden beneath his layers. “As I don’t seem to be having any trouble resisting it, perhaps our focus should initially be on working out what truth there was in whatever Chuck said to you, Sam.”

Sam’s gaze dropped down to Castiel’s forearm as he indicated it, freeing Dean from his irritating younger brother smirk and drawing a frown to his face. “Chuck didn’t tell me,” he said, “he showed me. What the future would be like if we got rid of him.”

“And?” Dean asked, raising his eyebrows.

Sam didn’t seem to be able to tear his eyes from Castiel’s arm. “We—uh, there were, there seemed to be a lot of monsters,” he said vaguely.

“A lot of…monsters,” Dean repeated slowly.

“Yeah, uh—” Sam cleared his throat sharply, pinching his lips and huffing out air in that way he did whenever he was trying to refocus. “—seemed like the balance had tipped more toward Darkness. Kinda like it started to do back when Amara hurt Chuck, though less extreme as he’s not actually dead.”

Dean nodded slowly, unimpressed by Sam’s unusual ambiguity but reasoning that they’d all had a long couple of days. “Alright. I get the theory, but how do we even know that’s true? It’s  _ Chuck.  _ I kinda doubt everything that came outta his mouth on principle.”

“I agree,” Castiel said. “My father has proved to be remarkably silver-tongued.”

_ Man, talk about Daddy issues,  _ Dean thought vaguely. Between him and Castiel these days, they should probably be on a talk show. 

“Well,” Sam said in that tone that Dean hated which meant he already had an answer Dean wasn’t gonna like, “I’ve been pulling all the books we had that mentioned The Mark from the library, trying to find out more about when it was created, more about Cain himself, and if the world changed any when he became the key.”

“And?” Dean didn’t want those answers, but they were vital.

“Work in progress. There is this, though,” Sam said, reaching over the top of the book directly in front of him and flipping open his laptop. Once he tapped in the password and the screen came to life, he pushed it across the table so that Dean and Castiel could both see the screen.

There were a lot of tabs open.

Cautiously, Castiel reached out. His strong, elegant fingers slid silently across the touchpad as he moved through them.

“Morning news,” Sam said.

_ Family of Five Dragged from Home by Wild Dogs... Six Teenagers Missing Overnight... Robbery at Blood Bank Leaves Authorities Baffled... Morgue Found Empty... Twelve Bodies Found Mauled Near College... _

Dean bit down on his bottom lip, and on the table his fist clenched involuntarily next to the coast of Ecuador. Shit. Those headlines sounded like they could be werewolves, vampires, demons…any number of things. That was an abnormal number of leads for a single day, for sure.

“We should investigate some of these occurrences,” Castiel suggested. “Perhaps some of them are human horrors, rather than supernatural. Dean and I could—”

Dean began to nod, but before he could begin to speak, Sam rolled right over him.

“No! I mean, yes, we should. But maybe we should call some other folks to take these in? We need to research and—” Sam’s eyes flicked down to Castiel’s arm, and there was definitely something more nervous and edgy about his voice than Dean really expected to hear, “—we should all stick together. Here in the bunker. Until we know the full effects of the spell and removing God from the world.”

A crease formed in Castiel’s forehead, and he looked set to argue. “There’s no reason—”

“Hey,” Dean interrupted, quietly agreeing with Sam but not wanting to fight about it, for once. “What about Michael?”

Sam turned his attention to Dean, smiling almost gratefully. “Yeah, good idea. We should ask Michael what info he has. He’s been pretty helpful so far, and he’s the one who gave us the spell so he’s probably the only one who knows exactly how it works.”

Castiel was still frowning, looking even grumpier than usual, but he dipped his head and acquiesced. “That seems logical. Do we know where Adam went after he opened the rift?”

Regretfully, Dean shook his head. “Could be anywhere. Dude has wings. All I know is, he’s not in the bunker.”

“Alright,” Sam said, looking over at Castiel again. “Well, can you get ahold of him? Pray, or something?”

Dean didn’t quite understand the look on Castiel’s face. He seemed apprehensive, and he looked down at the table for a moment, his lips twisting before he shook his head. “Perhaps that isn’t a good idea, right now. Can you call Adam?”

Dean and Sam exchanged a concerned look. Sam was the first to break it and nod. “Yeah. Dean—you wanna go give Adam a call, and maybe put on some coffee?”

Nodding, Dean pushed up off the edge of his chair and began to head back out toward his bedroom, where he’d left his phone charging after it died. He heard Castiel push his chair back in turn, beginning to say something about more books, but Sam cut him off.

“Cas, wait,” he said, low enough that Dean was fairly sure he wasn’t supposed to hear. “I need to talk to you about what Chuck showed me.” 

Dean did not like the sound of that.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Narrator voice: Dean was right._
> 
> Coming up next time: TFW meet up with Adam and Michael to gather important information about the Mark of Cain spell, and Castiel seems...agitated. 
> 
> Thank you so much for the enthusiastic comments on the last chapter! I really enjoy writing canon as a little 'break' from fun AUs on occasion, so its lovely to see people enjoying it along with me.
> 
> Question of the week: Do you think this is going to be as easy for Cas as he's trying to act like it will? Is there anything specific that he might not be considering...? ;)
> 
> Have a great day!
> 
> \- Mal <3


	3. In the Beginning

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here I am, back again!
> 
> Our story is going to start picking up pace over the next few chapters, and I hope you enjoy where we're going. (In the way that it's not enjoyable at all for our cast of characters, but unlike them, we know there's a happy ending ahead...)
> 
> I'm already deep into the next chapter. This fic seems to just want to come out, so I see no reason to hold it back, and I'll post whenever I can.
> 
> Thank you to the usual awesome people: SOBS, jscribbles, captainhaterade. You know not how many fixed rushed commas you owe those poor folks!
> 
> \- Mal <3

The rundown Jiffy Burger in Smith Center was an odd place to meet one of Heaven’s most famed angels, but apparently Adam had wanted a shrimp basket and hush puppies, so that was where Michael had flown off to. Dean was trying not to overanalyze the strange relationship between those two, in case he ended up at the wrong conclusion. Even so, he couldn’t help but be slightly amused that the almighty archangel Michael—the dude with the scales and the sword, who was painted standing casually on top of _dragons—_ seemed to constantly, happily, bend to the whims of a skinny midwestern kid with a penchant for fried food.

At least it was only a couple of miles from the bunker. And they had some pretty good curly fries, Dean decided as Castiel made his way over to the tiny booth they’d all crammed into, bringing Dean’s order with him on a red plastic tray. He’d even remembered the extra chili. Dean smiled.

Adam sat diagonally from Dean, next to Sam on the opposite side of the table. Dean shuffled a little closer to the wall to make space as Castiel slid in beside him, pushing the tray in front of Dean without a word.

“Michael,” Castiel greeted Adam politely, dipping his head as he settled into position, smoothing his trench coat around himself.

Dean looked across at Adam—his posture was straighter than it had been only moments before and his face more solemn.

He was also squinting hard at Castiel, not even bothering to greet the rest of them.

Sam looked uncomfortable, sharing a look with Dean that clearly spelled out _“What the hell?”_ mirroring Dean’s own thoughts.

Dean wondered, again, what Sam had thought was so important to tell Castiel before they'd left the bunker—but if Dean was finally learning anything, it was to take pause before he reacted. So, he'd wait, and see if Sam brought it up again. Hopefully to him, next time.

After a long, tense moment, Michael’s posture slumped just a fraction and his eyes widened. “Wow,” Adam said to Castiel, loosening up and grabbing a chunk of fried hush puppy dough from his plate. “You really pissed him off, huh?”

Sam blinked, looking back and forth between Adam and Castiel. “He did?”

“Oh, yeah,” Adam said, dunking the hush puppy into a disgusting amount of ketchup before bringing it up to his lips. After sucking the ketchup off, he redunked it. “What’s the deal with the arm thing, Cas? Why’s he so angry?”

 _Oh._ Dean shifted uncomfortably on the plastic bench, and it gave out a forlorn _squeak_.

Castiel’s eyes dropped, studying the Formica. His hand trailed slowly up from his lap to the edge of the table, the pad of his thumb pressing into a worn spot where the plastic curled away from the crumbly composite wood beneath. He pressed the layer back down firmly, frowning as if he was trying to fix it. Trying to fix something…anything.

Dean held his breath.

The plastic pinged back, ignoring the power of an angel of the lord, and doing its own thing.

Castiel sighed softly, barely perceptible if not for the fractional part of his lips. “Michael is angry because I took the Mark of Cain. That was not his intention when he gave us the spell.”

“What was his intention?” Sam asked, at the exact same time that Dean turned in his seat to face Castiel, saying, “Wait, _what?_ ”

Sam’s mouth snapped shut and he and Adam exchanged an uncomfortable look.

Tongue darting out to moisten his bottom lip, Castiel slid his attention wholly to Dean, all of the other brothers forgotten. “Dean,” he said quietly, searching his face. “Please, trust me. If there had been a better way to do this in the time we had, I would have done it.”

Dean’s jaw clenched involuntarily. “So, you weren’t supposed to take it.”

“No.”

“I was supposed to take it.”

Castiel’s eyes dropped guiltily back to the broken table edge, and Dean watched his throat bob as he tried to work out what to say, how to explain, what words he could use that wouldn’t make Dean angry…that wouldn’t undo their truce, yet again.

“Cas,” Dean choked out, pushing down the anger and strange sense of grief that was welling up inside him. “Please tell me you didn’t do this because—because I—” _Wasn’t strong enough. Couldn’t cope, before._

“I did it because I couldn’t stand aside and let that happen again, Dean,” Cas said dully, his voice far too quiet. “You survived this once, but who knows if you’d have been able to a second time? You don’t deserve this burden.”

“And neither do you!”

“I’m an angel,” Castiel argued. “Maybe my grace will help—”

“Maybe? You don’t _know_? You just jumped in, again, without thinking, without—”

“Oh, he thought about it, alright,” came a low, solemn voice from the other side of the table.

Dean jumped slightly. For the brief moment their argument had been escalating, he’d practically forgotten anyone else was there, let alone the archangel riding his half-brother. He hadn’t seen the transformation this time, but that voice was definitely Michael.

“Brother,” Castiel said, low and quiet. “I had to—”

“Enough,” Michael said. He looked down at his hand which was still holding one of Adam’s ketchup-coated nuggets of dough, and dropped the food distastefully onto a napkin before he turned his attention back to Castiel, wiping his fingers idly. “You thought...but you thought only of yourself.”

Castiel frowned but didn’t argue.

“You were selfish, Castiel. This one human does not—”

Suddenly, Castiel’s fist slammed on the table, his lip curling back, his voice a snarl. “If you say _does not matter,_ brother, then you are not half the angel that I hoped you were.”

“Perhaps he matters to you far more than he should, Castiel,” Michael bit back viciously. “If you had truly—”

Michael stopped suddenly, his face blank for a moment. When he returned his gaze to Castiel seconds later, it was with a distinctly un-angelic eye roll. “Adam wishes for me to stop being a hypocrite. That, I will allow, is fair. However, your favoring of this human has severe consequences, Castiel.”

Dean sat quietly in his plastic seat, holding a curly fry and suddenly feeling oddly like a kid watching his divorcing parents argue over who gets to keep the good stuff. He cleared his throat awkwardly, and both Michael and Castiel swung their gaze to him instantly. “Yup, yeah, still here. Me. Dean, the human. So, firstly…what the fuck?”

Michael looked at Dean for a moment longer before he turned back to Castiel, addressing his response to the angel, instead. “The two of you can argue over Castiel’s intentions between yourselves. But no matter his reasons, the result is, unfortunately, an unmitigated disaster.”

“I’ll be fine,” Castiel said rudely.

“No, stubborn little seraph, you will not.”

“Why not?” Sam asked, sounding both curious and fearful. “Won’t being an angel make his resolve stronger, or something like that?”

“When Cain took on the Mark, and indeed, when Dean took it on also, they both had something that Castiel does not,” Michael replied. He at least had the good grace not to sound smug or angry, Dean realized. Instead, he simply sounded sad, and perhaps…afraid?

“And what’s that?” Dean asked.

“A soul,” Michael replied simply.

Quiet fell around the table, and the Jiffy Burger’s lack of other patrons suddenly became a loud thing, too much silence trapped within the grease-streaked, advertisement-adorned walls. Dean sucked in a rough breath and shifted in his seat. Castiel was unmoving, and when Dean looked across at him he saw that the angel was staring down at his own lap, his hands clenched atop his thighs.

“Alright,” Dean croaked out, his mouth suddenly dry. “What difference does that make?”

“A soul is what allows a person to have a moral compass, Dean,” Michael explained, stiff and formal. “Without one, resisting the Mark will be many times more difficult. Angels have morals—well, some of us—simply because we are conditioned to follow the word of God, to follow the ideals of Heaven, to be shepherds of Man. A soul is dependent upon free will, you see; it cannot bloom in the wavelengths of an angel unless they rip out their grace and fall to Earth, as some of our kin have previously done.”

“But even with a soul,” Dean said, “I couldn’t resist the Mark. Not for long.”

Michael nodded slowly.

Castiel finally raised his head. “I believe your concern is misplaced. I can feel the Mark, yes.” His fist flexed subtly in the corner of Dean’s eye, and he could picture the scarred muscles of Castiel’s forearm shifting beneath the trench coat. “It’s not pleasant, I will admit. Its poison clings to my grace, and it is burned into my true form just as it is onto my skin. But I am aware of it. I control it.”

Michael’s skeptical look held as he voiced every fear Dean had for Castiel since the moment he’d dropped to the floor, screaming, at The Lucky Elephant Casino. “You can control it _for now_ , Castiel,” Michael said solemnly. “You can feel it now, already. I assure you—this is just the beginning.”

“Well we had to do something,” Castiel fired back, growing heated once more. “Chuck is out of the picture, so it was worth it.”

Michael’s expression darkened. “Speak to me with some respect, little brother.”

Castiel leaned in further, that snarl on his face that always reminded Dean of the vicious animal the lurked below the surface of Castiel’s stoic demeanor, ready to emerge when provoked. They were very alike, sometimes, he and Cas. “You haven’t seen the things we’ve seen these past years,” Castiel hissed. “You weren’t here when the angels fell, when Amara came back, when—” 

“Hey,” Dean said, his hand darting forward to Castiel’s arm instinctually. “Cas. Breathe. None of this is Michael’s fault, remember?”

Castiel’s arm was like stone beneath Dean’s hand, tight and solid, but the curl of Dean’s fingers over the sleeve of his trench coat did at least quieten him.

“Let’s not forget whose fault it was that I was in the cage in the first place,” Michael intoned, his eyes trained firmly on Castiel and flashing viciously. A strange thrumming sensation filled the air, abruptly reminding Dean that as reasonable as Michael had been, he was still very much a fully-powered archangel.

“You’re still an assbutt,” Castiel growled.

“Oh-kay,” Dean said swiftly, tightening his grip on Castiel’s arm before he could make things any worse. “I think we need a timeout in the angel staredown brawl. C’mon, Cas. How about some fresh air, huh?”

Castiel’s head whipped around, turning on Dean, and for a moment Dean thought that he was going to be next in line for the angel’s wrath—but Castiel visibly bit it back, his jaw clenching. He shook his arm from Dean’s grip and nodded sharply before pushing his way out of the booth. “Yes, you’re right. I could use some fresh air.”

Dean watched Castiel’s back retreat across the diner and out of the door, slamming open the door rather more loudly that was called for. He hesitated, looking back at Michael.

Surprisingly, Michael met him with a small smile. “Go, Dean,” he said. “He needs you. He may not realize it—or may be afraid of what it means—but he needs you around. You are, after all, his humanity.”

_His humanity._

Something tightened in Dean’s chest, and when his lips parted, no words came out. How did Michael know about the strange connection that he and Castiel had always had? The one that Dean had labelled, years ago, and hid from, and that Castiel had… Well, Dean feared that Castiel had simply never felt or seen it in the same way that Dean did.

 _“A profound bond,”_ Castiel had called it once, though they’d never spoken about it.

“I should give him time. Cas just needs to calm down,” Dean said quietly, shoving all his thoughts down with all the other crap he’d deal with later, at the bottom of a whiskey bottle. “He’s not usually like this.”

“Of course, he’s not,” Michael said calmly. “It’s the Mark. I assume that removing it from him is why you wanted to meet, but you must already know that there’s no way to—”

“Uh, no, actually,” Sam said, clearing his throat. “We wanted to talk to you about when Cain took the Mark, and what the world was like before he did.”

Michael squinted a little, but nodded. “Very well. Ask your questions.”

Dean flicked his eyes out to the parking lot, trying to spot Castiel. But, seeing nothing, he turned his attention reluctantly back to Sam and Michael.

“When we had a run-in with Chuck and Amara before, Amara injured Chuck,” Sam began. “He was dying, actually.”

Michael nodded primly. “Yes. Even in the cage, I felt it when my Father was wounded by the Darkness. Just as I felt it when she was released.”

Sam nodded, looking curious. “Well, Chuck wasn’t injured for all that long, but the world kinda started…falling apart.”

“Of course. The scales were tipping toward Darkness as the influence of Light was removed from the world.”

“Well, it turns out that Light is an interfering douchebag,” Dean butted in.

Michael frowned slightly, a series of wrinkles building across Adam’s brow, but he didn’t disagree.

“When Chuck was trying to make me lose hope,” Sam said, his eyes flicking nervously to Dean before they returned to Michael, “he showed me a vision of the future, where the world was filled with monsters because we locked him up.”

“Because the influence of Light was…weaker, locked away,” Michael mused, nodding as he spoke. “It’s a reasonable hypothesis. Amara is here, out in the world. She’s controlling herself, doing better, but she cannot change what she _is.”_

“Before Amara was first locked up and the Mark of Cain was originally created, what was the world like?” Sam reached across the table, tugging his untouched coffee toward himself. “Does that back up the theory that even if Chuck is still alive, locking him away will negate his effects?”

“ _In the beginning_ ,” Michael intoned solemnly, reciting, “ _God created the heavens and the Earth. Now, the Earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep_.”

“Bible quotes, Mikey?” Dean raised an eyebrow. “Really?”

Michael shrugged, a grin pulling his cheeks lopsided as he raised his palms innocently. “Bible quotes are my specialty, Dean. I’m the archangel Michael.”

Dean laughed, shaking his head. It was the most humor he’d ever seen Michael display. Under different circumstances, he thought, he might actually like this guy. There had to be reasons why Adam got along with his angel, he considered. “Alright. So, Earth doesn’t sound like it was great, is what I’m hearing.”

“No,” Michael agreed, nodding. “It was, perhaps, cosmically speaking, balanced between Light and Dark. But a balance between those two is not where Earth thrives. To be able to create your reality as you know it now, Chuck needed more Light, less Darkness. By the time Cain came along, his sister had loosened her hold on the world, but much of the planet was uninhabitable, and the children of Eve had begun to rear their heads.”

“So…we need Chucks influence,” Sam said dully. “That’s what you’re saying. If he’s locked up, the world will survive, but the ratio of Light and Dark is going to be wrong and Earth will be overrun with monsters.”

“You know who you _should_ talk to about all this,” Michael said.

Dean and Sam both waited.

With a heavy blink, Michael’s face relaxed and Adam’s calm smile rolled back across his features as he reached for his abandoned hush puppies. Scooping up a mountain of ketchup, he sucked it off the end of the dough before using the crispy chunk to point at Dean with a quick wink. “Amara, of course,” he said.

_____

The drive back to the bunker from the Jiffy Burger was only a few minutes, and thank God for that (or, uh, thank literally _anyone else_ , come to think of it), because the silence in the Impala was so heavy Dean was surprised it didn’t flatten her tires. 

Dean tucked Baby away in the underground garage when they finally got back. Sometimes he’d leave her on the road if they were heading back out, as no one ever came to this abandoned, industrial area of town anyway, but he knew they were likely heading into a long stretch of research. So, comfily stowed away with her friends in the Men of Letters’ hangar it was.

Sam gave Dean a long look before bailing out of the passenger seat, loping his way through the garage and away to the library like a giraffe fleeing lions.

Traitor.

Closing the driver’s side door, Dean gave out a little sigh. This could go a lot of ways, but given everything they’d been through the last couple of days, Dean knew what he’d prefer. Castiel moved around the Impala’s trunk from the rear passenger-side door and came to stand near her rear wheel. He had his hands in his pockets, and his eyes trained on the gray-painted concrete right in front of Dean’s feet. Waiting.

“C’mere,” Dean said, holding out his arms.

Castiel looked up sharply, blinking, as if that was the very last thing that he’d expected Dean to say. Which…was fair, honestly.

“You’re…” Castiel began uncertainly, stepping forward.

“Oh, I am mad,” Dean corrected as he reached out, gripping a fistful of Castiel’s trench coat at the shoulder to pull him in for a hug. “I’m fucking furious with you, asshole.”

The embrace wasn’t soft; it was a rough and hard thing, full of fury and regret and forgiveness. It felt like fragile stone that might flake under pressure.

Castiel hugged him back hard. 

Then, after a long breath, he hugged him back soft. “I understand why you’re angry,” Castiel admitted into the negative space behind Dean’s plaid collar. “But I also don’t regret it,” he added, slightly petulant.

“Yeah, yeah,” Dean said, shaking his head. “Of course, you don’t. Because it’s been a decade since you left the cloud nursery, but you’re basically still a fucking child.”

Castiel gripped harder, and Dean did, too, white-knuckling his way through their shared rage.

“You never consider anyone else’s point of view but your own,” Castiel said.

“You never stop to think things through,” Dean countered.

“If I had, would it have ended any differently, this time?”

Well, he had Dean there. Dean shook his head into the stiffness of the trench coat, relishing the rough, punishing feel of it against his face before he began a slow loosening of his grip, leading into a reconciliatory slap on Castiel’s shoulder.

“We’re going to fix this, Cas,” Dean said as the air began to seep between their bodies again.

“Dean, it’s not—”

“Broken, I know, you’ve said that before. Didn’t believe you then, either.”

Castiel huffed out a rare, low chuckle. “Are we ever going to be able to agree on anything? Or just…trust each other?”

Dean’s smile at Castiel was far more genuine than he expected. He let his gaze rest on Cas’ face and really took him in; a rare event, when so often he didn’t feel worthy of looking at him at all. Castiel’s lightly tanned skin looked a little older than it had when he’d smashed his way through that barn door ten years before, Dean realized.

It was probably something to do with him being away from Heaven for so long, he reasoned, or maybe the Almighty Asshole had simply updated him when he’d last popped a fresh Cas from the mold, so that he kept pace with the rest of them. Either way, Dean liked it; it made Castiel feel more real, more human. Adam looked essentially identical to how he had when he’d tumbled into the cage, and it was unnerving. That had been years ago. The kid didn’t even know what an iPad was, to Sam’s horror.

Castiel’s eyes, though, were still identical. And they were _his_ eyes, Dean had always thought. Not Jimmy’s, not by a long stretch. The few times Castiel had departed his vessel and they’d been left with the erstwhile Mister Novak, it had been like looking at a whole other creature. Flat. Feelingless, for Dean. Not Cas.

A puzzled smile fluttered across Castiel’s features as he looked back at Dean, his head tilting fractionally. Dean was being odd.

“I think we just have to decide to trust each other, Cas,” Dean confessed quietly. “That’s what I was doing, back in Purgatory. We don’t have to understand exactly where the other person is coming from, just trust that we’re each doing our best. I think we need each other, actually, to keep us both in check sometimes.”

With another low huff, Castiel gave a slow nod. “You may be right. And I do, Dean. I do trust you. And I…will try and communicate better with you, as you have been trying to do.”

“There we go,” Dean said with a tiny wink. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?”

Castiel’s scowl was remarkably fond.

Dean moved away from Baby, taking a few steps toward the bunker interior before Castiel’s voice called him back.

“Dean—in Purgatory...”

“Yeah?”

“When we reunited, before we left…” Castiel trailed off for a moment, and Dean’s breath caught in his chest. “Was there something else that you wanted to tell me?”

Oh, if this conversation had only happened before they’d driven to The Lucky Elephant to rescue Sam and Eileen, Dean realized with a sharp twist to his gut.

His pause must have been too long, because when he shrugged and shook his head, Castiel met his look with a skeptical, disbelieving smile. But his nod in return was measured, understanding.

Or Dean hoped that he understood, at least. The words Dean had hoped to say...they couldn’t be said right now. He just couldn’t.

_____

Dean tossed and turned in bed. His blankets—usually comfortingly heavy, Men of Letters-issue beige wool—felt like they were pinning his legs to the bed and constricting his chest, an imaginary straight-jacket of his own making. Eventually he kicked them off and lay in the cold, pulling up just the freshly bleached sheet across his chest. But still, he stared up at the accusing darkness of the ceiling.

He felt like he’d missed a chance. And somehow, that stung far more than feeling like he’d never had one.

Castiel had given him a second opportunity, right there in the garage, to say the words he hadn’t said in his Purgatory prayer. To specify the thing that had been between every line and word, the cause of the invisible italics of his _“Of course I forgive you”_ and his “ _I should have stopped you.”_

Dean had loved Castiel for a very long time.

To begin with, he hadn’t known what the feeling was. He’d never been the most in tune with his emotions, and when they’d met, he and Castiel both had been in such hopeless place; he’d never expected to find love there. But when he’d realized it, when Castiel had died at the end of Lucifer’s blade and Dean’s grief had consumed him with a fervor he hadn’t known how to handle, Dean understood that his feelings for the angel had been more than brotherly, more than friendly, for longer than he could remember. He couldn’t pinpoint the change, he’d never tried. By then, so far into their knowing each other—eight, nine years, by then?—it was too late to change anything.

Not that Dean would ever be worthy of a freakin’ angel, even if Castiel somehow made the mistake of loving him back.

Dean rolled onto his side, huffing angrily, punching his pillow.

In the past few years, though, as Castiel had become less Heaven’s watchdog and more grouchy, eternal friend, Dean had sometimes gotten the impression that maybe there were things unsaid. That maybe he wasn’t the only one.

Probably a fever dream, at best. Was he sick? Was that why he couldn’t sleep?

Fuck, no, his temperature was fine, Dean realized. A bit damn nippy, actually, without his sheet.

Sitting up, Dean kicked his feet over the side of the mattress and cussed softly at the chilling press of the bunker’s concrete floor against his soles. A few more low curses took him to his dresser, where he pulled out a pair of thick, white, winter socks and quickly pulled them on, standing awkwardly one-footed like a flamingo and wobbling next to the chest of drawers. He waggled his toes once he had them on; there, done. He’d be warm soon.

Simple problems had simple solutions. And maybe, he thought, there was a simple solution to his ongoing torment over Castiel, too. He knew that most of the reason he struggled to communicate with Cas was because he was always choking out words around the Thing He Couldn’t Say…so what if he just said it?

What if.

Castiel wasn’t cruel, Dean reminded himself as he found his freshly stockinged feet gliding toward the door. Even if he felt nothing for Dean, or wasn’t capable of feeling like that about Dean, they’d forgiven each other for much worse than some misplaced emotions.

The hallway beyond Dean’s bedroom door was always lit, even at night, with the dim, low-level emergency lighting that Sam wasn’t quite certain about the source of, even after all these years. Dean reached up to run a hand across his face as he walked, shoving it back through his hair and up to his crown, scratching idly. As his hand slid back down, his arm paused, his feet slowing.

His forearm was exposed by the short-sleeved white t-shirt he’d thrown on to sleep, and his eyes caught on the bare skin. Now, his arm was smooth and mostly unblemished—oh, he had the odd scar here and there, small scratches, white lines, tiny pock marks from old stitches. But, thanks to Castiel and his magical healing, Dean was in far better shape than any other hunters his age. Come to think of it…he didn’t know of many hunters that even made it to his age, scarred or not. Deep in Dean’s mind, though, that inner strip of his forearm would never be empty.

Oh, yes, the Mark of Cain was gone. It had been gone for several years.

But the things he’d done while bearing it, the grief he’d caused while wearing it on his skin, the feeling of rage and hatred, the broiling need to do _something_ that had slithered beneath his skin…that had taken far longer to fade than he was proud of. When he’d worn the Mark, he’d tried to sate it with blood, and pain, and sex, and booze, but it hadn’t even begun to scratch the itch.

He was weak, he’d supposed. Cain, somehow, had learned to live with it, up to a point—he was so in control, compared to Dean.

And now Cas…

Dean swallowed harshly, his feet shuffling to a stop as he reached the doorway to the library. It was empty. 

Dean turned back into the corridors, searching. Now, this very moment, this very night, might be the last chance he had to tell the truth to Castiel—to the Cas he knew, anyway. It wasn’t a pleasant thought, but it was gnawing at Dean, picking at him like someone worrying at a grotesque, itchy scab; chunks falling and tearing away until what was left beneath was just a raw, open wound.

Castiel had the Mark of Cain.

 _Castiel had the Mark of Cain._ The words were on an endless loop that only ceased when they crashed into the wall in Dean’s mind—the one built of fault and guilt and fear.

_Fuck._

Whenever something went wrong in Team Free Will’s lives—a new big bad, a new disaster—Dean always traced it back in his mind to its ultimate source. 

It was always him.

_My fault._

Dean wandered the halls, listening for Castiel, wondering where he’d sequestered himself for the night while the Winchesters slept.

_I was the one who took the Mark in the first place. The one who freed Amara. The one who pissed off Chuck by rebelling against his stories. The one who refused to be the Michael Sword. The one who—_

Dean’s vicious mental tirade was brought to an abrupt halt by the sound of thumping from further down the hall; rhythmic pounding sounds, interspersed with breaks and flurries with no regularity at all.

The gym. Castiel was in the bunker’s gym, Dean realized.

Padding his way down the corridor on soft feet, Dean made his way to the door. It was closed; Castiel had clearly not wanted to disturb anybody while he let off some steam, or whatever the hell it was that he was doing in there.

It was strange. Castiel was an angel. He was strong by default, and his body effortlessly maintained the same muscled frame that Jimmy had earned back before the angel had borrowed his form. Cas didn’t work out, not at all. Why would he? He had no need. But here he was, now, in the bunker gym at long past midnight.

Dean paused outside the door, taking a peek through its narrow glass window, his hand resting quietly on the cool metal handle.

Within the room, Castiel was swinging at one of several old 150 lb. punching bags that hung from the reinforced beams running along the gym ceiling. His trench coat made a tan puddle on the floor next to the opposite wall, and beside it were bundles of navy and white and the forlorn shapes of Castiel’s boots, flopped over against one another and shoved against the footboard. Dean’s eyes slowly shifted from the pile of abandoned clothing to Castiel himself.

Shirtless and barefoot, Castiel’s attention was zeroed in on the bag suspended before him. He went at it like a hurricane battering land, intent on destruction. Floodwaters of sweat coated his shoulders, gleaming their way down his back in waves, highlighted in the gym’s fluorescent lights as he stood perpendicular to the door. His shoulder blades flashed in and out of view as he punched the bag over and over, his fists flying out solidly in long jabs from where they rested up near his face. He wasn’t wearing gloves and his fists were long past bloodied; thin trickles of crimson ran down from his split knuckles to his elbows, but he paid them no mind.

Dean’s breath hitched as Castiel threw his head side to side, flicking his sweat-soaked hair out of his eyes. His locks looked almost black, curling from the dampness. He was practically steaming, every muscle vibrating as he danced forward on his toes, punching harder, harder, again, again.

A chill went through Dean as Castiel’s wide swing gave him a glimpse of the Mark on his arm, red and obscene. It was the most violent part of the whole picture—until Dean saw Castiel’s face.

His teeth were bared like an animal’s, ferocious and snarling. His eyes were the darkest blue Dean had ever seen them. Streaks of blood had been dashed across his face, here and there, as he’d wiped his hands or pushed back his hair, and it only added to the savagery of the sight. It was barbaric, but Dean couldn’t take his eyes off him.

Dean’s dick immediately wanted to salute Castiel’s sweating, bare body. He wanted to know what he tasted like, how his muscles would feel under Dean’s tongue. But every other part of Dean crawled with wrongness, and fear, and guilt.

Beyond the door, Castiel let out a growl that travelled even through the reinforced metal, and he threw a punch so hard the chains above the bag jumped and a shower of plaster fell from the ceiling. Castiel didn’t seem to notice, stepping forward, following the bag, his fists meeting it again before it even had a chance to swing back down.

His next punch sent it flying, a resounding crash vibrating the gym walls and filling the corridor as the equipment flew out of its permanent fixture in the ceiling, the one that had held it through every punch since the 1940s, and sent it careening into the wall.

Castiel’s eyes followed it dully, his chest heaving, his mouth hanging open and taking deep, ragged breaths like Dean had rarely seen him need.

With one bloodied hand, Castiel reached up to push the sweaty curls of dark hair back from his forehead. 

Then he simply sidestepped, moving to the next punching bag, and started all over again.

Silent, swallowing down horror he could barely breathe through, Dean slowly backed away from the door, and headed back to bed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's all she wrote!
> 
> For this chapter, at least.
> 
> What do you think - should Dean have gone into the gym, and told Castiel his long-withheld truth, before its too late? Or was he right the first time, and this is really the wrong time for them?
> 
> Thank you so much for taking the time to read and comment! I love responding to you an seeing what you think. If you are so inclined, you can find me [over here on tumblr.](https://malmuses.tumblr.com/) If you want to chat, send potential prompts, or ask questions, come and join me!
> 
> \- Mal <3


	4. Between a Man and a Monster

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, hello!
> 
> I've been working on several other things, but in between, the next chapter of this story sneaked out. This story isn't for everyone, I'm sure--there's a lot of angst before we get that happy ending, but I'm enjoying writing it.
> 
> You may also notice a little something... we now have a total chapter count. 
> 
> I hope you enjoy this chapter! 
> 
> Big thanks to [jscribbles](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jscribbles/pseuds/jscribbles) and [EllenOfOz](https://archiveofourown.org/users/EllenOfOz/pseuds/EllenOfOz) for encouragement, beta reading, and listening to me worry about dumb things, on the regular. <3

Dean’s eyelids were made of sandpaper. Every time he blinked his irises stung, dehydration making everything feel gritty and sore. He raised his hand from the countertop, pressing the pad of his thumb and the crook of his forefinger into his eye sockets, willing wakefulness to clear up his vision.

The coffee maker hissed.

Four hours a night was a joke. It’d been the half-truth he’d survived on for nearly twenty years; the amount of sleep he could get by on when he was keyed up, hunting, twisting inside, when he felt manic, when the itch beneath his skin drove him to distraction. During those days, when he was a machine, a sharp tool, a hunter—four hours was his truth. But the other days, the ones where he’d struggle to leave his room, where he’d wear the same novelty pajama pants for six days until Sam side-eyed him into shame, the weeks where he struggled to speak, grunting and angry because his own voice made him mad…four hours wasn’t even a nap, then.

Last night, after returning from his one-sided encounter with Castiel in the bunker’s gym and slinking between his cold, accusing sheets, he’d barely managed two hours. The itch under his skin was vicious.

The coffee cups in the bunker kitchen were very small. Like everything else they’d come with the place, sitting untouched on the shelves since the middle of the last century. It hadn’t ever mattered; Dean made coffee by the pot, so he could refill his tiny ass cup as much as he needed.

He was already staring at the bottom of his second cup, very focused on not thinking, when a hand pressed to his shoulder. Dean whipped his head around on reflex, only to find Castiel standing calmly beside the table, the coffee jug in hand. Smiling his tiny, even smile, he moved the glass carafe over the top of Dean’s cup and refilled it, until the shimmering black surface met the lip of the cup.

Castiel wordlessly prepared a second serving for himself, then lowered down to sit next to Dean, the corner of the table between them.

They both watched the steam roll off their coffees, leaning on their forearms with a slump to their spines, sharing a silence.

Their lax hands were inches apart. The distance taunted Dean.

Eventually, Castiel shifted, sliding his fingers away and around his coffee cup. As if he was done waiting; but that was a silly thought. Dean wasn’t even sure what he would have been waiting for.

When the coffee was gone, Dean pushed his cup away across the table. Immediately, Castiel reached for it, rising to take it to the sink.

“Leave it,” Dean growled. “You aren’t a goddamn maid.”

Castiel froze, clearly confused, but moved and put the cup into the deep butler sink anyway. Because he was nothing if not a contrary fucker on occasion, Dean thought with amusement.

“Sorry,” Dean said, as Castiel came back to the table.

Castiel said nothing.

“You gonna talk?”

“I’m not sure what you expect me to say,” Castiel responded evenly. “Am I to report my status to you on a regular basis? Did I miss the part where you’re my babysitter, now?”

Dean sighed, biting back a fighting response and rubbing his hands back across his face, instead. “What are we doing?”

Castiel’s silence was gentler than any words he could have formed. After enough of it, though, he put his hand back on the table. He rested it flat on the top, palm down, inches from Dean.

Overthinking every tiny motion, Dean reached out to grab at it, placing his own hand on top of Castiel’s and linking their fingers together. Castiel lifted his palm just enough for Dean to curl the tips of his fingers right underneath, gripping tightly. In return, Castiel squeezed his fingers together.

They stayed that way, muscles tense and trembling, in absolute silence until Sam stumbled in to deliver a scathing soliloquy on the ripeness, or lack thereof, of the bunkers avocado supply.

Dean’s hand slid subtly away under the table as Sam made toast. Castiel’s eyes were big and strangely disappointed; he rose and left, without a word.

“What’s up with him?” Sam asked.

“He’s the key to the metaphysical cage that’s holding back God, and it’s eating him alive,” Dean said flatly.

Sam didn’t answer.

Every second that passed was another sand grain of weight on Dean’s back. The silent minutes grew heavier and heavier. Dean rolled his shoulders, trying to shake the load off, but it was no use. He was about to get up and head into the garage to give Baby a once over—an actually constructive way to use the strange energy under his skin— when Sam passed behind his seat. 

Rather than walk on by with his coffee and avocado toast, Sam reached across and placed his phone in front of Dean, face up, news article ready loaded.

“There you go. Donna’s on it, but she called early to see if we could help. Found the nest, but it’s big. I know we need to be researching removing God from the world, but she needs a hand.”

Dean pulled the phone closer, peering at the writing on the screen. A body found in a dumpster in Sioux City, throat ripped, blood drained. Good place for vampires, Sioux City, Dean thought idly. It was right on the border where Iowa, South Dakota, and Nebraska met. Lots of people passed through it, a lot less actually stayed.

“Seasoned vamps in groups are usually more careful than that,” Dean offered thoughtfully to Sam. Vampires didn’t live as long if they were sloppy—hunters might not be prolific, but there were enough around the country that a vampire as unsubtle as that wouldn’t last long.

But then, they’d already seen that more and more monsters were crawling out of the woodwork since they’d locked up Chuck. Maybe they were getting bolder now, too.

“Well, they messed up this time. Donna found the warehouse where they’re holed up, but there’s at least fifteen of them at her count. She’s been watching them for a few days, picking off one here or there, but she wants a couple of us to go, dive in unexpectedly.”

Dean nodded. “Yeah, that’s how I’d do it.”

“You should go.”

“I don’t think it’s a good time to—” 

“Dean,” Sam said. He bit his lip awkwardly before continuing as if deciding what he should say. “Some of the stuff Chuck showed me, back at the casino...a lot of our friends died. I just think...”

Understanding, Dean nodded. “Alright. I get that. But I don’t know if I should leave Cas right now, either,” he admitted quietly.

“Take him with you. He seems okay, so far.”

For a moment Dean wrestled with telling Sam what he’d seen in the middle of the night; Castiel sweating and struggling and raging in a way that...well, in a way that Dean wasn’t sure Sam would understand. It felt strangely like a betrayal of Cas to tell Sam, especially when he didn’t even know that Dean had been watching him. 

“I can promise you,” Dean said instead, quiet and low, “that Cas is struggling a lot more than he’s letting on.” 

There was a beat of loud silence before Sam responded. “Then maybe it’ll be good for him to let off some steam. You can keep an eye on him, watch for signs he’s not doing so well.”

Nodding slowly, Dean slid his phone back to Sam. “Yeah. I guess that wouldn’t be a bad idea.”

One hand occupied with coffee already, Sam tucked his phone into his back pocket and nodded to the library. “I’m gonna get back to researching, well...y’know; God.”

Dean let him get to the steps with only an understanding nod before he quietly called, “Hey, Sam?”

“Yeah?”

“Did you hear anything from Eileen?”

Sam’s hand twitched self consciously to his back pocket. “Yeah, I mean—a little. We’ve been texting some,” he answered, sounding like he didn’t want to talk about it at all.

Understanding, Dean gave Sam a tiny, hopeful smile before he turned to disappear down into the library. He really hoped that Eileen could work past what Chuck had done—he’d already fucked up so much, why’d he have to mess up something as pure and good as that? 

Rising to go in search of Castiel to give him the news about the hunt, Dean sighed. At least one of the Winchesters should get to be happy with the person they love, surely. 

Fuck God.

_____

Sharp stakes of wood and rough-edged chunks of wall plaster flew out of the side of the old, rotting warehouse along with Dean, all landing on the muddy concrete outside in one loud, bruised pile.

_ “OOF!”  _

Dean gasped, desperately trying to replace all of the air that had been knocked out of his lungs as he landed flat on his back. 

_ How the fuck had this all gone so wrong? _

Castiel had taken no persuading at all to leave the bunker. He’d seemed happy that Dean wanted his company, pleased that even with the Mark seared onto his arm he was still being included. That alone broke Dean a little, inside. If Cas had asked if Dean was keeping him close in order to keep an eye on him, he’d have confessed. 

But he didn’t ask, so Dean didn’t tell.

But it felt like a lie, and it hurt to see that something as simple as asking for Castiel’s company could coax such a smile from him, one that was much larger than the tiny lip quirks Dean was used to. Had things really been that bad, before? Back before Purgatory? Dean was forced to admit that they had been, the contrast too stark to ignore. 

It made him even more determined to change things, to fix things. To improve things, too, if there was even a chance Castiel could be on the same page about what "improvement" meant...if they could just get through all this. His knuckles had just tightened around Baby’s wheel harder, and he’d pushed through the miles to Sioux City. 

_ If they could just get through this. _ As if he hadn’t had that same thought for years, now.

They’d left after lunch and arrived early evening, just in time to check in with Donna and grab a greasy dinner before all piling into Baby—fewer vehicles, less likely to be noticed—and heading for the warehouse on the southern outskirts of the city, ready to catch their prey before they headed out for the night.

_ “Son of a bitch,”  _ Dean hissed, easing his way up out of the rubble, propping himself off the floor on his elbows as he made sure he could move his legs, his arms, his neck. Methodical. 

Dean was fine. Well, he was going to ache like hell in the morning, he was sure, but for now he could shake it off. 

He had to get back into that building.

To start with, everything had gone to plan. The three of them had all entered at different points, picking off several vamps on the outskirts before they even got to the warehouse proper. But the main room of the old packing warehouse was full of monsters, and it had turned into an all-out brawl within moments.

_ That’s _ where it had all gone wrong.

Dean had kept Castiel in his peripheral vision the whole time. He’d seen the moment where he’d started to slip, the angry growl that had burst from deep within him when one of the vampires had managed to get a couple of hits in. Enough to pull Castiel’s attention, enough to get him angry. 

Jesus, he’d been so angry.

It had been a bad idea to move up beside him, Dean knew that now—Castiel wasn’t focused on Dean, or Donna, only on the fight, the rhythm, the blood, the rage...Dean knew very well how narrow Castiel’s focus had been right then.

He’d been there himself, after all.

_ My fault, _ Dean thought, wincing as he rubbed his sternum, clambering to his feet.  _ Should’ve shouted first. Not that he’d have heard me. _

Castiel had rounded on Dean just like the next vampire, slamming his palm flat into his chest and then swinging him around, straight into the wall, before any recognition had even begun to show in his dark, shadowed blue eyes. The look of  _ Oh, shit! _ that Castiel wore would have been funny in any other circumstance.

By then, it was far too late for Dean’s spine and the route it was committed to, straight through the shaky warehouse wall.

Really, Dean could only be grateful that the wall  _ had _ been weak enough to give way. Otherwise, Dean’s body might have.

He took a couple of breaths, letting his lungs fill, his head swimming. Sluggishly, he began to focus on the sounds inside again, on the last few vampires, the fight winding down but still vicious, still frightening. Dean’s machete was still in his offhand, too tense to have let it go even as he fell onto the concrete.

The adrenaline from the fight was long gone, but Dean was still shaking. There was a strange, electric feeling in the air; every muscle a live wire, just waiting for a…spark.

“Stop! Castiel,  _ stop!” _ Donna’s high-pitched scream was enough to propel Dean back into the building, shaking off the plaster and dust from his forced exit.

“Cas!” he shouted, tearing back through the hole he’d created on his way out.

The leader, a vampire in a well-cut suit who’d screamed orders when they’d first burst in, was face down on the floor. She scrambled forward as Dean entered, wide-eyed and terrified. Her face was a mess of blood spray and mangled flesh, practically pulp where Castiel had punched her, over and over. Her teeth were broken on one side, jagged shards filling her mouth as she opened it to scream or maybe even to beg for help—but from behind her came Castiel’s hand, red and sticky and horrifying by itself, to tangle in the back of the vamp’s hair.

Castiel smacked the vampires face down into the concrete, his knee on the creature’s spine giving it no chance of escape. The fleshy melody echoed horrifically around the tiled walls.

The smell of the rusted warehouse and the scent of blood from the remains of the nest hit Dean straight in the stomach as he rushed over to Donna, crouching against the wall on the other side of Castiel. With a few swift nods she reassured Dean that she was fine, and he turned his attention back to Cas.

The vampire was prone, then, and Castiel’s angel blade was sticking out of the back of his chest. With a revolting bubbling noise as blood filled the vampire’s lungs, Castiel’s blade made a slow, agonizing circle, wiggling deep into the wound.

“Cas,” Dean called, softer than before, swallowing down bile at the nightmarish familiarity of what he could see.

Castiel didn’t look up at his name. All his attention was on what was left of the vampire sprawled in front of him. The swinging, flickering light bulb above, shadeless and unflattering, highlighted Castiel’s angular cheekbones, crudely exposing his appearance. Bloodied. Streaked with fresh, oxygenated blood in stark red lines that trickled slowly down his face and neck, Castiel’s lips were drawn back into a snarl.

The sight of it made Dean’s stomach churn.

The angel blade ripped back, before plunging forward again.

And again…and again, more blood splatters collecting across Castiel’s angelic face.

“Cas!” Dean shouted again, desperate, scrambling forward. He reached out, grabbing at the angel’s wrist on its next swing back. “STOP!”

For a split second—the most horrifying second of them all—Castiel looked like he didn’t even know Dean. His snarl intensified, his arm jerked free…and then, like a pinprick of light in the back of his pupils, there was recognition.

“Dean,” he gasped, his voice rasping low between heaving breaths.

“Cas,” Dean repeated again, both hands up in a sign of placation before he dared reach forward, slowly untangling the angel blade from Castiel’s fingers. “She’s dead, buddy. You can stop, okay? She’s dead.”

Castiel looked stunned, and ragged breaths began to shake out from his lips. “She’s dead,” he repeated slowly.

Dean nodded, reaching out to curl his fingers over Castiel’s shoulder, searching for his eyes. “Cas, this isn’t you.”

With a jerk, Castiel pulled his shoulder free of Dean’s touch, his brow creasing. “They’re monsters, Dean. They don’t matter.”

Too stunned to say anything in return as Castiel snatched his angel blade back, Dean merely watched as Castiel wiped it clean in his coat, straightening up. He took one last look down at the vampire before he looked back at Dean.

Deep in his eyes, Dean could see it: the absolute terror, and horror, and revulsion at what that tiny, momentary lapse of control had done.

“Are you alright?” Castiel asked gruffly.

“Yeah,” Dean couldn’t help but bite back. “Not too bad for someone that got thrown through a wall, Cas.”

“I’m sorry.” Castiel’s eyes dropped for a moment, but then his head shook and he tucked his angel blade back into his sleeve. “The vampires are all dead, though. At least for once I was useful,” he said, before stepping away, pushing out through the swinging door and heading back to the Impala.

Donna refused to ride back with them, said she’d call Jody.

Dean couldn’t blame her.

_____

Dean’s elbows were aching from the weight of his head in his hands, immobile against the map table for near an hour. He was fine after his flight through a wall during the hunt the day before, but he sure was sore.

Sam had left him be. Dean didn’t know if Sam couldn’t understand where Dean’s head was at, or if he did, and this was all he knew how to do. Either way, Dean appreciated the space. 

The drag of the chair next to his own being pulled out from the table made Dean jump violently—in any other place, the sudden sound would have caused a domino effect: panic, yell, gun. But in the bunker the instinct was muted, years of relative safety taking the edge off. 

“Dean,” Castiel greeted him quietly, smoothing down his coat as he settled into the hard chair, forgetting the personal space he had, at one point, seemed to be working on. His thigh pressed against Dean’s beneath the table.

There didn’t seem to be any words to be said, so Dean just nodded, and returned his head to his hands. He didn’t move his leg.

After wordless minutes that stretched on and on and on like pulled gum from their mouths, Castiel finally spoke. 

“I’m sorry, Dean.”

“Don’t be.” Before the words even finished forming behind his lips, Dean knew he meant them. He wasn’t angry at Cas for how he’d acted, even if he still couldn’t shake the image of Donna’s terrified expression from his face. He knew, without a doubt, that Castiel was still seeing that expression too.

Silence wrapped back around them, and Dean sensed more than saw Castiel slowly slumping, slowly pulling away. When the gentle pressure of his leg against Dean’s own finally pulled away, Dean’s hand darted out—permissionless, but done—and took the angel’s hand, just as Cas had done at breakfast the day before.

Castiel’s hand was shaking.

Dean said nothing.

On the tabletop, their fingers rested entwined, more tightly than was probably needed, but everything felt somewhat desperate between them right now. No, between them and the world. They were fine…but it wasn’t just them, now. Castiel wasn’t just him, he was something more, and it was dictating their interactions in ways Dean had never expected.

All the thoughts rolling around his head started to line up, and Dean let out a short sigh.

A little squeeze of his thumb was Castiel’s prompt for him to let the words out.

“I thought…I mean, I really thought that”—Dean let go of Castiel’s hand only so that his own could push up over his face, through to the crown of his hair, before forming fists in midair. Slowly they drifted back down, entangling with Castiel’s waiting fingers again like magnets—“after the past few years, I thought I knew where the bottom was, y’know?”

Castiel nodded slowly. “You’ve spent a lot of time reassessing your measure of that since Heaven interrupted your life, I believe.”

“Yeah, buddy.”

The silence was warm, but sad.

“I’m sorry,” Castiel murmured again.

“I’m gonna need you to stop saying that, okay? Because if you keep it up, I’m gonna get in my head and I’m probably gonna punch you.”

“Part of me wishes you would.”

“We did that last time, remember?” Dean said darkly. The reminder soured the air immediately, both of their shoulders bunching involuntarily. It rested between them for a long moment before Dean added, “I couldn’t stop thinking about your face.”

Castiel’s brow crinkled, his head shifting just that endearing little bit to the left. It helped; he looked exactly like himself. “My face?”

“How you looked. After I beat the shit out of you. After I almost killed you.”

“It’s not going to be like that, Dean.”

“You’re a bigger dumbass than I thought if you really believe that.” 

Castiel’s jaw clenched, but his fingers did too, and all it achieved was making them cling tighter to each other.

Overhead, the iron steps clunked—notably without the bunker door groaning—and the interruption saved them. This time. On the balcony area above stood Adam. Or Michael. No, Dean was pretty sure that was Adam. It was really hard to tell, sometimes.

“Look who it is,” Dean said, plastering on a grin so fake that Castiel flinched away from him. “Welcome back, Eddie Brock.”

From the way he narrowed his eyes in disproving confusion, Dean realized he’d been wrong. That look was all archangel.

“Ahh, no. My bad. It’s the symbiote. To what do we owe the pleasure, Mikey?”

Michael descended the stairs very slowly, swinging his feet. He looked like he carried far more tension in his body than was necessary, though by the time he reached the bottom step, he hit the bunker floor with a little jump that was all Adam.

“He definitely won’t get those references,” Adam said.

“Do you?” Dean asked, curiously, pushing out of his seat. “Weren’t you in the cage when that movie came out?”

Adam looked affronted. “Movie? Comic books, man. Dad never bought you comic books?”

Dean felt his own jaw drop. “Seriously? Baseball games  _ and _ comic books?”

Adam grimaced guiltily. “Sorry.”

Dean would have liked to at least pretend that could let that roll off his back, but damn, that still stung somewhere down deep. He cleared his throat, intending to relocate the whole conversation, but Castiel had him covered.

Pushing up from his seat at the map table, Castiel greeted Adam with a nod before asking, “Why are you here?”

Side-eyeing Castiel for his blunt question, Dean cleared his throat and tried to summon up a smile as he softened it with, “Yeah, didn’t think we’d be seeing you again so soon. Didn’t you have a fast food tour of America to go on?”

Adam gave a small laugh. “I know you racked up some years in Hell, Dean, but try over a thousand of them. Arby’s has never tasted so good.”

“You won’t hear any argument from me,” Dean agreed. He leaned against the edge of the war table, folding his arms across his chest as he gestured for Adam to continue.

“Michael and I have been discussing—” Adam paused, and Dean knew he was conversing with Michael, just from the softly amused look on his face. “—Well, I persuaded Michael, after some serious discussion, that we should offer you our assistance.”

“Assistance?” Dean asked. Help was great, who’d turn down a fully powered archangel—but given the pickle that they were in with Cas the Mark and the world being out of whack, he wasn’t sure an archangel would even make that much difference.

“With finding Amara,” came Michael’s slightly deeper version of Adam’s voice. 

Dean blinked in surprise at his sudden appearance but managed to force out another smile. “Oh, uh, hey Mikey.”

Michael ignored his greeting, his eyes flicking across to Castiel, instead. “While discussing your predicament with Adam, we realized that you may struggle to find Amara, as your only angelic assistance is…”

The way Michael’s sentence trailed for a moment made the back of Dean’s neck prickle defensively, and Michael wasn’t even looking at him. Castiel was practically expressionless, and immobile at Dean’s side.

“Compromised,” Michael eventually said.

“Compromised,” Dean repeated flatly.

“Yes.” Michael turned to look at Dean, meeting his eyes with obvious exasperation. “No matter what you are trying to tell yourself, Castiel is no longer reliable.”

Dean felt Castiel’s muscles tense along his left side, even heard the subtle swish of his trench coat as his arms shifted, but thank goodness, Castiel said nothing. 

“So?” Dean questioned.

“So, I will take you to Amara,” Michael said as if stating the obvious. “I have located her, and I will fly the three of you to her location. Hopefully, she can clear up the question of the effects removing my father from this plane will likely have.”

Before Dean could even begin to formulate an answer, Castiel was stepping away from the table, moving toward the library. “Very well. I’ll fetch Sam. Let’s go.”

Dean watched Castiel’s back disappear with a heavy, churning feeling in his gut. He’d have called the feeling foreboding, or premonition, or a really sucky augury, but all of those words made it seem like what was coming was a mystery— so that wasn’t it. The problem wasn’t that Dean didn’t know; the problem was that he did. 

It wasn’t foreboding, it was dread.

  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Coming up:** _In The Increasing Darkness_ \- The team meet with Amara, Cas gets angry, and Dean has to make a promise he knows he can never keep.
> 
> Do you think Cas will be able to shake off the incident with the vampire nest as easily as that? And what do you think about contacting Amara - will she give them good news or bad news about an Earth without God? 
> 
> Thank you for reading!
> 
> \- Mal <3


	5. In the Increasing Darkness

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, readers! 
> 
> I've been itching to get back to this fic for a while - I apologize, to any of you that are still reading, that you had to wait a while for an update. 2020, y'all. It's been a real kick in the teeth, huh? I'm so happy to be back to posting it, though. I love to write a bit of canon angst to remind me why I fell in love with these fiercely loving, miscommunicative, badass idiots in the first place.
> 
> Warnings for this chapter: a bit o' violence, a lot of tears. 
> 
> Love and thanks to [DarkHeartInTheSky](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarkHeartInTheSky/pseuds/DarkHeartInTheSky), [jscribbles](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jscribbles/pseuds/jscribbles), and captainhaterade for alpha/beta/screaming help. Y'all are precious and patient, so thank you.
> 
> Enjoy, folks.
> 
> \- Mal

  
  


Dean had almost forgotten how much he hated being transported around at angel-speed. He was much more comfortable with Impala-speed. Being rocketed through space by Michael reminded Dean less of his own possession (by the other, even-more-of-a-dick Michael), and more of the few times Castiel had zapped him around, way back when his wings had worked. Dean wasn’t sure he’d say “chained to a comet”—more like being strapped into a carnival bungee ride after eating _way_ too many iffy concession-stand hot dogs. He wasn’t going to be able to poop for a week.

When they landed, Michael’s grip loosening on Dean’s shoulder, they were in a small room with reddish, planked walls and gently blowing yellow curtains. It was quiet. Incense tickled Dean’s nose, wafting cones and dishes of _stuff_ crowding a small table under a low window. 

“Smells like a wet forest in here,” Dean complained, as soon as he was sure that he wasn’t going to throw up the second that he opened his mouth.

Michael lifted his chin, inhaling briefly. “It’s the nag champa,” he said, as if Dean’s question required a serious answer. “Very earthy.”

Dean blinked a couple of times; Michael stared back.

“I shall go retrieve your brother and Castiel. Though I still believe his presence is unwise,” Michael said after a long moment. “My brother should have been left out of this.”

His neck immediately tight with exasperated tension, Dean squared his shoulders. “Me and Cas are a package deal, Angry Bird. No negotiation.”

Maybe he _should_ sideline Cas, but he wasn’t going to; this was Cas’s fight, too.

“Why must you mock and antagonize me?” A thick crease developed in Michael’s brow, his voice dropping to a fury-filled growl. “You do realize that I could smite you faster than your brain synapses could fire? I could invert your ribcage, as covered with Castiel’s adorable scribblings as it is, and reinsert it before your lungs had time to draw breath. I could heat up your blood until it was hotter than the sun, and then force it to stay within your veins, making you feel every moment.”

Staring back, Dean stepped up into Michael’s space. “Then do it, bitch.”

“Dean!” Adam’s voice—less angry but _distinctly_ pissy—switched out with Michael’s, his hands coming to Dean’s chest to shove him back. “First of all, personal space, dude. Second of all, stop doing that, okay? You’re not the one who’s stuck in here with his grumpy ass after you’ve riled him up.”

Dean rolled his eyes. “Sorry, Eddie.”

“Enough with the Venom jokes.”

Raising one eyebrow, Dean smirked. “Oh, so it’s _not_ like that, then?”

There was the tiniest pink tinge to Adam’s cheeks. “Shut up. Stay in here while we go get Sam and Cas. Don’t engage Amara on your own.”

“Oh, no way am I planning on seeking her out”—Dean realized he was talking to himself, Michael having poofed already, and rolled his eyes up to the star-painted ceiling of the tiny room—“alone.”

Left to wait by his lonesome, Dean studied the room a little more and went over to peer out of the small window. It looked like he was in some kind of spiritual place, which maybe made sense. They were, after all, looking for the sister of G-O-D himself. Some kind of temple, maybe? Or monastery? It was _hot_ though; what country was this, even?

Dean was still squinting out across a pretty little courtyard for clues when a tall, skinny man in way-too-tight bicycle shorts strolled past the window, blocking his view. Dean recoiled quickly, hiding himself out of sight. What kinda bizarre place was he in?

With only the softest puff of air, Sam and Michael appeared in front of him. Wordlessly, Michael poofed off again.

Sam shook himself and shoved his hair back behind his ears. “That’s so cool,” he said, “but I’ll never get used to it.”

“The flight? Just take my advice and don’t eat anything spicy for a few days.”

A tiny paunch of confusion appeared between Sam’s brows, but he said nothing as he moved over to take a peek out of the low window himself. He had to duck.

“No idea where we are,” Dean said, “but it's stinky and—”

“Looks like a yoga retreat,” Sam said. “In India, if I had to guess.”

“A what now?”

“A retreat, like a…kinda like a camp where people do a lot of yoga.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know what a retreat is; hippy bullshit—but why? Why the hell is Amara _here_?”

Sam gave a careless shrug. “Realigning her dark, smoky chakras or something, who knows? Who cares—as long as she’s here, I’m all for it being a public place. Might make it a fraction less likely she’ll do that wispy, black cloud thing and kill us.”

“I don’t believe Amara cares too much whether she has an audience,” Castiel rumbled from behind them.

Turning, Dean saw him straightening his trench coat and brushing off his shoulder with a pinched expression. It was probably a bit of a kick in the teeth, Dean guessed, for his big brother to have to fly him places when he used to have functional wings of his own.

“Ready to do this?” Sam asked.

“Ready as we’re gonna get, I figure,” Dean said, pushing as much forced cheer into his voice as he could. “Maybe she’s forgiven us for that whole, ‘gonna blow you up with a chest full of souls’ thing.”

“She did make up with her brother,” Sam said with uncertainty. “She even gave you a reward in the end.”

“Yes,” Castiel said flatly, “and then we trapped the brother she made up with in the very same metaphysical cage she herself had been imprisoned within.”

Silently, they filed out of the tiny room; Dean first, followed by Sam and Castiel, then Michael at the back.

Dean hated this whole place already. He detested the incense and the beaded curtains, the musky smell, the multiple pairs of brown man-sandals they passed as they walked across a sunny courtyard, drifting left to move around a pink, blossoming tree planted in the middle.

His hatred of the smell and the sandals and the hippy-ness of the place had absolutely nothing to do with an alternate 2014 and the things he’d once seen there, he told himself. Again and again.

Locating Amara wasn’t hard; she was in the first room they tried, right off the courtyard. Her long brown hair was tied up in a messy bun, she wore neon workout gear, and her feet were folded up onto her knees in a pretzel-like pose as she sat on the floor.

She looked so very…normal.

“Wondered when you were going to poke your heads out of that little meditation shack and come play,” she said without opening her eyes. “Did you really think that I couldn’t sense you the moment you arrived?”

Sam cleared his throat awkwardly, and they all shuffled into the room and closed the door behind them. It was a bright, clear space, the floor lined with reed mats and the windows adorned with dangling crystals and chimes.

Amara slowly pushed herself up out of her yoga-ish, crossed-legged pose—which Dean thought didn’t look comfortable in the slightest—and rolled her shoulders, turning to look at them. She eyed each of them in turn before her eyes settled on Dean, a tiny smirk pulling at her mouth.

“You know that you and I will always share a certain connection, Dean.” Her dark eyes flicked across to Castiel on Dean’s left before returning to him. “I’d say _bond_ , but I suppose that spot is already taken.”

Dean felt Castiel tense up next to him, like a cat about to spring. Or an attack dog. Dean reached out and grabbed hold of his sleeve, anchoring him with a fistful of trench coat. “Amara,” he said, as amiably as he could. “I came of my own free will, this time. We all did.”

“Did you, now?” she said, soft and calm and…well, yeah, creepy. Dean didn’t like the sound of that, at all.

“Yes,” Castiel rumbled, low and dangerous. “Free will. Something we’re all working on since we locked your brother away.”

Amara took a step toward Castiel. She was slim, shorter than Castiel, barefoot—and yet somehow, she was intimidating. She looked like she was towering over him, taking up more than just her physical space in the room. A lesser being than Castiel would have cowered.

Instead, Castiel just stuck his chin out obstinately, silent.

Dean gripped onto his trench coat sleeve tighter.

“I felt that,” Amara said, her voice low and dangerous as her eyes flicked down to Castiel’s arm. “I felt my brother be ripped away, felt the familiar stain of that ancient magic on the world…some of the first magic, you know. Tapping into forces that even now, humans don’t have names for, so powerful and primal you’ve yet to conceive of them at all…and yet, you people think that you can play with them, control them.”

On Dean’s other side, Sam and Michael exchanged a worried look in his periphery, not pleased with how this was going so far.

“It’s cute, really,” Amara continued, stepping closer to Dean. “Humans are so ambitious.You really are some of my brother’s most intriguing toys. But always repeating the same mistakes.”

They were all holding their breath as Amara raised a hand, gesturing vaguely between Dean and Sam, a concerning amount of amusement in her gaze.

“Just like Cain and Abel,” she said, shaking her head before moving her long, elegant fingers across to Dean and Castiel. “Or Cain and Collette, of course.”

Castiel stiffened again and this time Dean bunched up right along with him. The story that Cain had told Dean long ago, of his wife Collette and his journey with the Mark… Alright, Dean had thought—just once or twice, in the dead of night, when he was alone—it wasn’t like there _weren’t_ any similarities there, between him and Cas and Cain and Collette. He wasn’t stupid.

 _“I’m the one who’ll have to watch you murder the world,”_ Dean heard in the back of his head, a distant echo.

It chilled him to the bone.

Oh, how far they’d come, only to end up back in the same place.

Dean set his jaw and pushed back his shoulders. Nope, he wasn’t going to let her get in his head like this, they did not have time for this shit.

“Yeah, so we locked up Chuck. Sorry about that, it was kind of an emergency situation, you know how it goes.” Dean gave a little apologetic grin that he didn’t feel in the slightest.

Amara’s eyebrows were about to meet her hairline. “He was my _brother.”_

“And he locked you up, like it was nothing. For eons,” Castiel reminded her in a growl.

“Cas,” Dean hissed quietly, “keep a fucking lid on it or I swear to God—”

“Dean,” Castiel snapped, his eyes tearing from Amara long enough to skewer Dean into the ground. “There’s no point in sweet-talking and negotiating here, either she wants to help or—”

“Guys!” Sam barked before clearing his throat. He smiled weakly at Amara, who was staring at Dean and Castiel, baffled. “Sorry, about, uh, yeah. So, we actually came here just to ask you something. That’s all, just a quick chat.”

Amara’s eyes left Dean and Castiel very slowly, her brow knitted together like she wasn’t entirely sure what she was seeing, and even less sure that she liked it.

“Sam,” she said, calmer but no less deadly. “Let me get this straight—you and your little sedulous band of dime-store action heroes decided to come here, after imprisoning my only family, to…chat?”

“Yes,” said Michael, finally speaking up. “We are looking for information about the world before you were banished.”

“Michael,” Amara said, her eyes flat as she took him in. “I haven’t seen you since the Earth was a baby, archangel. You helped my brother imprison me.”

Michael nodded slowly. “I followed orders. I am Heaven’s sword, as you well know. When we last fought, I was young. A new creation made only to serve my father’s will. I knew nothing of the precious world he claimed we were protecting from you; it was younger even than I was, in the ultimate scale of time. I wasn’t told more than my orders.”

Amara’s nod was slow. “You were…a weapon. A toy. In the end, all of the angels were.”

Michael inclined his head, a sad air to his expression as his eyes ducked to the floor. “I was not made to question. Perhaps if I had, things would be different.”

Dean supposed that was as much of an apology as it was possible to get from an archangel. Well, except maybe Gabriel…but that little shit would probably have his fingers crossed behind his back.

Amara gave Michael a little shrug. “Who knows. It’s irrelevant, now. I’m free, and I’ve changed. What question do you have for me?”

“The world before. Before you were imprisoned. What was it like?”

“Dark. Filled with the first creations—you like to think of yourselves as the first, but you weren’t. There were trial runs, creatures that ended up in Purgatory, later. That biblical creation story…it’s more like a big clear-up. My brother started cleaning, and then when Earth was _formless and empty…”_ Amara raised her eyebrow at Michael, inviting him to continue.

 _“God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from…”_ Michael trailed off to silence.

 _“The darkness,”_ Castiel finished for him. “That’s when he got rid of you. So that he could place his new creations here. They needed a world with more light than darkness. Not a balance…a tilt toward the light.”

Amara was dangerously still. 

Dean’s knuckles ached from the way his fingers were digging into Castiel’s coat sleeve, the stiff fabric uncomfortable against his skin.

“So,” Sam said, carefully picking up the conversation again, “are we right in thinking that with Chuck locked away, his influence is…weaker? Like when, uh, you were…”

There was an undertone of dull red to the dark flash of Amara’s eyes. “Your hypothesis is correct. You should have thought of that before imprisoning my brother.”

“We didn’t have a choice,” Castiel growled, tugging his arm free from Dean and stepping forward into Amara’s space. “He wanted to eliminate us—not just us, the whole world, and other worlds too.”

Amara’s lip curled back from her teeth as she calmly looked Castiel up and down. “Angels, just like humans, overestimate their own importance.”

There was a grotesque _crack_ as Castiel buckled, his body bending like he was held in a giant fist. He screamed out, deep and angry and pained, and grace flared in his eyes. The tiny room lit up with it for a moment, the blue-white light brighter than the midday sun outside.

“Cas!” Dean shouted, darting forward and grabbing at him without a thought. Sam immediately appeared on Castiel’s other side, supporting him as he wheezed. Blood dripped from the corner of Castiel’s mouth.

Ever stubborn, even without the Mark of Cain urging him on, Castiel struggled back to his feet and straightened his back slowly, panting as he fixed his gaze on Amara. His right arm lifted away from his body a few inches; his angel blade slid into his hand from within his sleeve.

“Cas!” Dean tried to call him back, tried to speak sense—though he knew perfectly well that with the burn of the Mark sizzling in your veins, there’s no such thing—and reached out to grab at his arm again.

Amara’s eyes didn’t leave Castiel. She flicked her fingers, and Dean felt like he got hit in the sternum by an eighteen-wheeled semi-truck. He flew to the other side of the room, kissing the floor with a mouth that already tasted like blood. He heard his ribs crack, then his ears rang so badly that he couldn’t even register what Castiel and Amara were shouting at each other—all he knew was that this was _bad,_ and he had to stop Cas before Amara stopped him forever.

Castiel’s blade came forward in an arc that would have been deadly if this was any other fight. He embedded it just below Amara’s collarbone, inchest deep, but she didn’t even flinch. Dark smoke poured from the wound.

Dean dragged himself across the floor.

Sam was gone; Michael must have grabbed whomever was closest and flown the moment the fight started.

Dean was glad. At least that meant Sammy was safe.

“Cas,” Dean croaked out, blood spraying across the floor between consonants and vowels.

Ignoring Dean like the ant she probably thought he was, Amara raised her hand like it was nothing, driving Castiel to his knees. Invisible blows seemed to rain down on his body. He flinched away from them, his pink-tinged teeth bared in a grimace. Slashes erupted across Castiel’s chest, bright and gleaming and glossy, a waterfall of crimson dropping to the floor—but Castiel didn’t pay it any heed.

Dean could see it in Castiel’s eyes as he turned—the wholly uncontrollable rage, the blood thirst, the desperate need to hurt, to destroy, to kill.

But even so, Castiel turned from Amara, and crawled toward Dean.

Dean could see Castiel’s lips moving, but he couldn’t make sense of words anymore. There was only pain, and blood—and then an odd sense of cloaking as Castiel’s hand touched Dean’s wrist. Something warm and safe wrapped around Dean, something he could barely perceive. The floor seemed to slide under Dean as Castiel rolled over top of him, and a strange, translucent shadow dropped around them. There was something electric making Dean’s arm hairs stand on end; the shadow smelled of gunpowder and lavender and night air right after a lightning bolt.

Dean felt Castiel’s fingers come up to his forehead, the familiar motion of his gentle touch pouring the very essence of himself into healing—and then Castiel screamed, right next to Dean’s ear, and his grace cut out like a light.

For a moment everything was silent. 

Then Dean felt a hand on his shoulder, and he was flying again.

_____

Michael landed with an awkward stumble, knocking over one of the map table chairs. The strange _whooshing_ sensation of wings lasted a moment longer, as if he was beating them wildly, scrambling to find his feet.

“Whoa!” Sam dived forward quickly, dodging the fallen chair and reaching out to catch as much of Dean as he could.

Dean realized that Michael had a hand on him and a hand on Castiel—in fact, his hand was all that was holding Castiel up, a firm handful of bloodied trench coat keeping Castiel from slumping into a puddle on the floor.

“You’re okay?” Sam asked quickly, his eyes skimming up and down Dean as if he was counting limbs.

Dean looked down at himself, still dazed by the sudden fight and even more sudden exit. “Yeah—yeah. I’m good. Cas healed me, I think.”

Castiel nodded vaguely in answer. He slowly yanked his shoulder from Michael’s grip, leaning on the war table instead.

“Thanks for the quick exit, Mikey,” Dean said. He reached over to gently place a hand on Castiel’s shoulder blade. “You gonna heal yourself, Cas?”

“He can’t,” Michael said bluntly. “Amara burnt up his grace. It will take a while to replenish. I repaired what of his vessel I could: the bones, the large wounds. He won’t bleed out now, but…against The Darkness, even my power is only so much.”

Castiel’s eyes remained on the tabletop, taking a lot of interest in the Solomon Islands. “Thank you, brother,” he said quietly. He sounded sheepish and just… _hopeless,_ a hollowness to his voice that made Dean’s chest hurt.

“You almost got us all killed,” Michael fired back.

Castiel didn’t say anything in reply. Dean hated when Castiel went silent, in that special way he had—not the silence of quietness, but the heavy stillness of a gathering storm. Tension shivered through Castiel’s muscles for a very long minute, but then Dean felt his shoulder slump beneath his hand.

With the words having drained out of them all, quiet descended, thick and uncomfortable.

Sam was the one to clear his throat, playing the peacemaker more often than Dean thought was really fair. “Okay, well, why don’t you go shower off, Cas? If you can’t heal up right now, you can at least get clean and we’ll make sure you don’t need stitches or anything, check out anything Michael couldn’t fix.”

With a dull nod, Castiel straightened, pulling away from Dean’s hand. He shuffled away without a word, straight toward the shower block.

As soon as the back of his tattered trench coat had disappeared, Michael turned to Dean.

“That was _exactly_ what I was afraid of happening!”

Dean did his best to bite back an exasperated groan, but some of it escaped anyway. “Really? An ‘I told you so’? You think that’s helpful right now?”

Michael glowered. He was a really good glowerer, with Adam’s thick eyebrows descending judgily. “If you had listened to me in the first place, then I wouldn’t have to say any such thing. How many close calls will it take before you learn?”

Dean opened his mouth, but Michael wasn’t done, his arm raising to point after Castiel. “He is not the angel you are used to. That is not your friend, or however you think of him—that is a monster. He is _tainted,_ struggling—he is constantly fighting against the Mark, Dean, and he is _losing.”_

“I am not giving up on Cas!” Dean shouted, getting up in Michael’s face without a second thought. His fist clenched—but then loosened, the fight flowing out of his tired body almost instantly. “I—I can’t. I can’t give up on Cas.”

Michael looked genuinely perplexed. “Why?”

“Because he didn’t give up on me.”

Something in Michael’s face softened. “The right choice is often the hardest one.”

“Then I’m gonna choose wrong.”

Dean had never realized Michael had a tick in his jaw when he was mad, not until that very moment.

“You would put one angel’s life ahead of your own, ahead of many, ahead of the world.”

“Yup. Have done, will do. Every time.”

Michael’s hand came up to his face, and he rubbed at his eyes with the pads of his fingers, pinching his lids shut in a very tired, oddly human gesture. “I don’t understand you.”

“Me either, half the time,” Dean admitted. “I know this is hard for you to believe, but I’m not trying to be difficult, okay? I just think Cas is better off where I can keep a close eye on him, right now.”

“You do seem to be the only one who can calm him, at least a little,” Michael begrudgingly allowed. “But putting him in situations like that has to stop, Dean. You must see that—increasingly—he can’t control himself, at all.”

Even Sam was giving Dean a little beseeching look. Traitor.

Slowly, Dean’s shoulders slumped. “I get it, okay? I do. But take it from me, he’s gotta let off steam somehow. It’s like a pressure cooker otherwise. But I’ll…I’ll keep him on milk runs until we work out what to do.”

With slow nods, Sam and Michael agreed.

“Alright,” Sam said, jerking his head toward the kitchen. “How about I get a few beers, and we start digging into the research again. We have problems on all sides and no solutions. The Mark is a problem, Amara is now a problem—then we’ve still got the Heaven-dying problem. Unless, uh, Michael can help with the Heaven thing?”

Dean and Sam both looked over at Michael.

He shook his head sadly. “My presence in Heaven would help, I’m sure. But in the grand scheme of things, I, alone, am not enough to fix the issue. There are not enough angels, and Heaven will fall.”

“Guess that’s back on the research list, then,” Sam muttered.

“If I can make a suggestion,” Adam’s voice didn’t betray the switch as much as his relaxed posture and small, hopeful smile did. “Maybe instead of looking how to power Heaven differently, or how to make more angels, we should just look at how to get back all the ones that were there before.”

“You mean pull them out of the Empty?” Sam asked, his brow creasing. “But no one comes back from…”

At the same time as Sam trailed off, his forehead smoothing with realization, Dean’s brain jumped to the same conclusion.

“Cas did. Cas came back from the Empty, somehow. If he got out, other angels can.”

Sam and Dean looked at each other silently, but Dean would bet they were thinking the same thing.

_Jack._

“One thing at a time, though,” Adam said. “Beer—and maybe some chips, or like, chicken tenders if you’ve got some?—and problem number one: Amara. We need to protect ourselves, first, and work out what to do about her influence, second.”

Dean nodded in agreement. “Amara. Then Cas. Then Heaven. No offense to Heaven, or anything. Why don’t you guys get started on that?”

“And you?” Adam asked, raising one eyebrow pointedly.

“I’ll help,” Dean reassured him, before jerking his thumb over his shoulder and beginning to head toward the showers. “I’m just gonna go check on Cas first.”

Adam nodded, accepting Dean’s answer and turning to wander off to the kitchen—but Dean could feel Sam’s eyes on him, weighty, until he turned the corner out of the room.

_____

Initially, Dean planned to wait outside the bathroom until Cas was done. Of _course_ he did. He wasn’t about to bust in on the dude while he was in the shower, even if plenty of Dean’s best sexy dreams contained markedly similar content.

He leaned against the cool wall of the corridor, his eyes closed, taking a minute to rest and focus.

But the minutes passed, and Dean grew more antsy.

Cas was struggling—not just with the Mark, but with his own feelings of shame at not even being able to handle it as well as Dean had, at least initially. That much was very clear.

It was stupid, of course, but Dean got it. Angels were prideful creatures, and Castiel, in particular, was a stubborn ass when he wanted to be. Something they had in common, for sure—a reason for many of the times they knocked heads, neither of them willing to be wrong or back down.

The longer Dean waited, the tighter his shoulders became, his gut full of angry, hissing, rolling anxiety.

Dean paced in the corridor for as long as he could stand, until the ball of vipers in his stomach wouldn’t let him wait another minute. His own body ached and snarled with fear and worry as he pushed open the bathroom door, letting the steam curl out without looking inside.

“Cas?” he called, trying to project his voice over the running water, but sounding weak and fearful anyway. “Are you okay in there?”

There was no response, only water and steam.

“Cas—I’m coming in, okay?” Dean warned. He waited a moment, but there was no answer, so he pushed the door further and took a step onto the tiled floor.

Opposite the entrance, Castiel’s bloody trench coat lay over one of the stone sinks. A bar of soap sat desolately on its collar, as if Castiel had attempted to clean it, but realized part-way through that he wouldn’t have much luck while he was still covered in blood, himself.

Through the clouds of billowing heat, Dean could make out Castiel, curled on the bottom of the left-most shower stall. His back was to the wall, his knees drawn up to his chest. He was still clothed, as if he’d figured that there was so much blood across his shirt and dress pants that he might as well just get in the shower with them; his boots and belt lay abandoned halfway there, his suit jacket a couple of feet further along.

“Cas?” Dean called again, the tightening sphere of horror in his core twisting and snapping. “Are you okay?”

Castiel’s head lolled forward onto his knees, hiding his face, and his shoulders began to shake. 

Jeans and plaid be damned, Dean moved forward. Fuck everything—he cared about none of it, climbing into the shower stall brazenly, water beating down on his lower back as he crouched down beside Castiel.

“Hey,” Dean said more quietly, reaching out to touch Castiel’s shoulder. He flinched back, but then let out a sound like a long, puffing sob and leaned back into the touch, allowing it. Dean gripped tighter, lowering himself to the wet tile floor and scooting up next to him, pulling him in. “You’re okay,” he said, more firmly. 

Droplets fell from Castiel’s soaked hair as he shook his head slowly. “No,” he said, his voice heartbreak and fear and loathing, “I’m not.”

Not able to argue, Dean just tugged him closer, aggressively hugging Castiel into his side and shaking his head against his temple. “You will be. We’ll work this out.”

When Castiel’s face lifted, searching for Dean, it was wet and distraught in a way that Dean knew had nothing to do with the shower water. 

“She could have killed you.”

“She didn’t, though.”

“But she could have. You got hurt, and it was my fault, because I couldn’t control—” Castiel’s fist clenched. Dean felt the shifting of his muscles as the tension traveled right up his arm to where the Mark had sizzled its way onto his skin. “I couldn’t control myself.”

“That’s not your fault,” Dean mumbled into Castiel’s wet hair, inhaling the smell of warm water and waxy, grocery-store shampoo that was struggling to overpower the unfortunately familiar, upsetting smell of blood. It always smelled the way Dean’s brain told him old pennies would taste. “I get it, Cas. I’m not mad—no one is mad at you.”

Dean conveniently didn’t mention Michael.

“I’m mad at me,” Castiel mumbled wetly.

“So what’s new?” Dean joked lightly. Squeezing Castiel’s shoulder a little tighter before he added more softly, “When I was where you are, I tried everything. I drank and fought and fucked, and even then, I could only suppress what that thing would do to me for so long. And Michael said it would be worse for you.”

“I have to control it,” Castiel said down into the soaked knees of his pants, his voice barely audible above the water. “Somehow.”

“Well, gotta say, the fighting isn’t working out so well for you,” Dean noted dryly. “Might be time to stick to milk runs and take up drinking and fucking.”

Castiel huffed out a wet laugh, entirely flat and humorless.

“We’ll work something out, Cas,” Dean promised. “You and me, we got this, okay? And Sam, and even Michael and Adam—you’re not on your own with this. I understand how you feel right now. And I’m gonna do everything I can to stop this getting worse.”

“Why?” Castiel asked, lifting his head. He looked lost, a wet curl of hair plastered to his forehead. “I’m a waste of resources when you have Amara to worry about, and when Heaven is—”

“Remember Purgatory?” Dean interrupted quietly.

“Which time?” Castiel asked, his familiar squint making Dean feel slightly better.

“Most recent. Remember all that stuff I said?”

“Your prayer.” Castiel nodded. “Of course I remember.”

“Well, we’re gonna fix this Mark thing,” Dean declared bravely. “Because I wasn’t done, alright? You and me, we’re not done. You hear me? I’m not done with you.”

For some reason, the words Dean hoped would be reassuring seemed to crack the dam further, and Castiel’s fists clenched as his head rolled forward, growling over the beating showerhead, “I’ve almost killed you _twice_ since then, Dean! How long is it going to be until I make a mistake we can’t fix?”

Dean had no answer to that. Because he knew, as well as Castiel did, that if they didn’t take more extreme actions, then the answer was simply a matter of time. In lieu of words, Dean just pressed his forehead harder into Castiel’s temple, squeezing his own eyes shut.

The falling water was getting cold. Neither of them seemed to care. For a couple of long minutes, silence fell. Dean knew he had to break it, needed to say something reassuring, but…fuck, what could he possibly say? Their options were pretty bleak.

Restrain Cas? Stick him in the dungeon, put him through agonies until they worked out a plan? Dean couldn’t. Maybe he should, but he couldn’t.

Castiel broke the silence between them himself, before Dean worked out how to.

“Dean,” he croaked, choking on the word, “I think I—”

A cascade of sobs stole Castiel’s breath.

Wrapping his arms tighter, Dean waited, the see-through fabric of Castiel’s white dress shirt slick beneath his fingers as he pointlessly _shushed_ him, rubbing his back as if there was any way that could help.

“I need help,” Castiel forced out after a long minute, somewhere in the wet vicinity of the side of Dean’s neck.

“I know,” Dean whispered over the falling water.

“Please help me,” Castiel begged, causing the ball in Dean’s stomach to finally dissipate.

“Of course I’m gonna help you,” Dean soothed, glad that his own tears were lost in Castiel’s damp hair. “Whatever it takes, buddy, okay? Anything. We’re gonna fix this. We’re gonna do it together.”

The words were meaningless, but Castiel nodded against his throat, and that was progress.

“Come on,” Dean murmured once the water was completely cold, and his thick plaid clung to his arms like a freezing sheet. “Let’s get you out of here. Check your wounds and get warm. It’s not good for you to sit in cold water, with your grace being low.”

For the first time in weeks, Castiel didn’t fight.

  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Coming up next time:
> 
>  _Oh, So Far Below_ \- Dean takes a trip to see an old frenemy for advice, Sam comes up with an idea, and Castiel keeps secrets.
> 
> I hope you enjoyed a dose of this story, folks! We've got a ride to go on before we earn that happy ending, but its fun to explore this very specific timeline that the show handed us. 
> 
> Do you think, now that he's been able to admit to Dean that he's struggling, things will get any better for Cas? Or worse? Let me know!
> 
> Please [subscribe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MalMuses/profile) for updates, or feel free to look me up on social media!
> 
> \- Mal <3
> 
> P.S. Want a great canon fic to sink your teeth into? [Try this one!](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26471326/chapters/64503292) If canon fic is your thing, you might also like to check out the first episode of [Mixtape Book Club](http://www.mixtapebookclub.com/), a Destiel fanfic podcast, which is all about canon fic.
> 
> P.P.S. Due to a spate of nasty comments of late, I have enabled comment moderation. I hope that this can be temporary, but for now, I'm sorry if you have to wait a little to see your comment added. <3


End file.
